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Imperialism 



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A Brief Resume of the Questions of the Day 



...BY... 

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CHARLES W. SARCHETT 



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[COPYRIGHTED] 



DES MOINES 

PUBLISHED BY CONAWAY & SHAW 

1899 



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PREFACE 



We offer no apology to our readers in presenting this 
little volume for their inspection. We believe it to be 
the duty of every man or woman who can write — and 
most of them can and would, except for a prudish fear of 
criticism — to once in awhile express themselves on all 
the leading questions agitating the public thought; other- 
wise public opinion might concentrate in certain chan- 
nels, and the real expression of the sentiment of our 
toiling millions would be ignored. 

Chas. W. Sarchett, Author. 



IMPERIALISM 



CONDITIONS. 



There are two principles at work in the structure of 
our political system, generally opposing each other, 
either of which, if carried to extremes, would prove 
destructive to all our institutions. These principles are 
not new, but on the contrary are as old as the world and 
have been active factors in all the systems ever instituted 
by man to govern men. It has been the object of all 
governments so far established to reconcile these two 
principles in a way in which they might work together in 
harmony and thus produce something approaching per- 
fection. All such efforts thus far have totally failed. 

This, then, is not a theory but a fact perfectly suscep- 
tible of proof by all past history. This does not, how- 
ever, disprove the remaining claim which either party 
has made that the principle which they advocate will 
finally prevail, and that a form of government will yet be 
established fulfilling every requirement and meeting 
every want of humanity. If humanity were wise enough 
to rear such a structure in the abstract a more impor- 
tant question then would confront us — How are we to 
make our uncultured, undeveloped and undisciplined 
forces meet with its practical operation without force 
and without friction? Can man rise in govern ment 
above his environments, or conform to a system above 
his intelligence, or is not government itself a necessity 
of the condition of the people whom it is expected to 
govern? Again if we consult history we find that 
according as a nation has increased or decreased in 
intelligence and morality, their governments have 



6 IMPERIALISM. 

advanced or receded either toward or away from a per- 
fect form and in such progression or retrogression has 
been subject to the same mutation and operated 
upon by the same causes. Ambition, wealth and religion 
have played their part until the axiom has been evolved 
that history repeats itself in a regular circle through 
all gradations from absolute monarchy to anarchy. 
This, then, is another fact which history proves beyond 
dispute. It does not, however, disprove the claim that at 
some time some nation will produce a perfect form of gov- 
ernment — a dream which has been indulged by theorists 
since men have been capable of theorizing and which has 
taken various forms, both religious and political, and 
which for three thousand years has been by certain 
religious sects, Pagan, Judean and Christian, expected 
to be realized in the millennium. 

Theorizing, however, has not been a success except in 
so far as to give many valuable lessons and to apply new 
ideas to practical conditions (which is the same as to say 
that new conditions have evolved new ideas), and that 
governments must, like all other human institutions, be 
progressive or retrogressive and adapt itself to the wants 
of the governed. It is not, then, the rich, the powerful, 
the religious fanatic or superstitious, the ambitious, that 
we have to fear any more than it is the ignorant, indo- 
lent, vicious, poor, and degraded elements, and not so 
much either of these as the conditions, religious, politi- 
cal and social, which can and does produce them. 

" It is a disgrace to a community to have one beggar 
among them" is copied from a weekly paper. The man 
who wrote it does not say in what way it is a disgrace, 
whether the man disgraces the community or the com- 
munity disgraces the man, and so far as the condition 
and status of that community is concerned, it makes no 
difference which view we take of his meaning, the fact 
still remains, and before we condemn this man as a beg- 
gar, let us be fair and candid enough to inquire what are 
the causes which led to his becoming a beggar, and not 
lose sight of the fact that a state of society might exist 



IMPERIALISM. 7 

more likely to produce beggars than other states of 
society which do not produce so many; and that if there 
are degrees of such states of society it is not beyond the 
bounds of reason and common sense to suppose a state of 
society wherein no beggars could exist. But it is not 
necessary to prove that there are conditions of society in 
which beggars do not exist; there are and have been 
many such places, and it follows that any community may 
resolve itself into such conditions and that every commu- 
nity is responsible for its beggars, and that its prestige 
and standing are lowered or raised by the number of beg- 
gars which it does or does not contain. 

The same reasoning will apply to poor people and to 
criminals. The more intelligent the people of a state or 
territory are, the better government they will have, the 
more safe will be life and property, and the more pros- 
perous the people will be. Criminals do not migrate to 
such a state or territory; it is not congenial to their 
habits; their business would not thrive there. A poor 
man will not migrate to a country where the people are 
all poor; there is no chance for him in such a place — he 
cannot make a living there. On the other hand a rich 
man is apt to go where he can invest his money in enter- 
prises that will pay him the largest dividends. In all 
these cases there are exceptions, but they do not dis- 
prove the rule, and it does not follow that such a con- 
dition of society never will exist wherein morality, 
politics, and religion will be so blended and harmonized 
as to produce a condition wherein crime and poverty will 
be unknown, and, although some men will be wealthy 
and others comparatively poor, there will be such a dis- 
tribution of nature's grand store as that every man and 
woman will be able to do for themselves physically, 
mentally and morally all that God requires of them, and 
until such condition does exist our form of government 
will not have reached its climax as laid down by the 
founders, and just so far as it recedes from this it fails to 
fulfill its mission as intended in the declaration of inde- 
pendence and the constitution of the United States. In 



8 IMPERIALISM. 

our system laws do not count for anything unless they 
are enforced, and to quote u a governor," "an unwhole- 
some law cannot be enforced." Whether the governor 
meant that public opinion was higher than the law or 
could repeal it, makes no difference, the thought is the 
same. Public sentiment is the law in this country. As 
public sentiment, then, is moulded by our public educa- 
tors so will it be put into statutes by our legislators, and 
if the people lose their liberties it will be self-imposed 
national suicide. 

What Thomas Jefferson meant by the expression, "We 
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cre- 
ated equal," seems to be bothering the minds of some 
people of late and they seem to be seeking for some hid- 
den meaning in the lines or between them that will con- 
strue them into something different from what they say. 
The words are plain enough and easy to understand, and 
they sound very agreeable to the common, everyday 
wayfaring man. It would seem indeed that any man 
whom God ever made and stamped with His own image 
would be pleased to hear that he was not created in any 
respect inferior to his fellows, but was created equal in 
all ways as God Himself says, for of course Thomas Jef- 
ferson is not the first nor the only authority, and he 
knew it. But Mr. Jefferson meant more than this mere 
assertion, for he goes on to say ' ' that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among 
which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and 
that to secure those rights governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just, powers from the consent 
of the governed." Now, if we reject or change any part 
of this remarkably sweeping declaration we must reject 
or change the whole of it, for it will admit of no other 
construction. We must either say equal or unequal ; the 
case admits of no degree of inequality; we cannot over- 
step the bound; it is a clear case of excluded middle. But 
the very fact that some are seeking for some means to 
explain away this self-evident truth speaks ominously for 
the condition that must exist calling for a change in the 



IMPERIALISM. 9 

fundamental principle upon which our institutions are 
founded. But have we arrived at that condition? and if 
so, what has educated the public mind up to that point? 
and is it a progressive or a retrograde movement? In 
this republic, as in all former establishments for the gov- 
ernment of mankind, the two principles before mentioned 
have been actively at work, the one tending toward con- 
centration and centralization of power, having its final 
climax in monarchial forms ; the other drifting away from 
all forms into a pure democracy, as was sought to be real- 
ized in ancient Greece; the former ending in absolute 
tyrany, the latter in anarchy. 

If, now, we have arrived at a point in our destiny 
where it is proposed by some to be our best policy to 
depart from the traditional principles cherished by our 
fathers, it behooves us to inquire in what direction will 
this departure lead- us? Whether we are tending toward 
centralization and imperialism or disintegration and anar- 
chy, the question needs no other answer than the fact that 
the present policy of our government is openly avowed 
to be that of imperialism, one of the forms of monarchy. 
It would seem at first glance that such an anomaly could 
not exist, coupled with a republican form of govern- 
ment. Queen. Victoria is empress of India, but could the 
president of the United States be emperor of the Philip- 
pines? The answer is that he is, in fact if not in name. 
We quote from another paper which says: " A republic 
has citizens, a monarchy subjects, and a republic cannot 
have subjects without self -stultification. " If this be 
true we are making a backward step. Let this policy be 
carried out to extremes and it will as surely destroy our 
liberties as that the policy of secession and disintegra- 
tion adopted by the south in 1861 would have destroyed 
our government had it not been put down by armed 
force at a vast sacrifice of life and treasure. But it is 
more to be feared than secession, having the president 
at its head with a large standing army and navy and the 
resources of the nation at his command and the people 
blindly applauding his movements. Not since the nation 



10 IMPERIALISM. 

had its existence, even in the darkest days of rebellion, 
has the life of the republic so trembled in the balance. 
So we have unconsciously arrived at this point and have 
taken the first step in the direction of imperialism. ' ' The 
Rubicon is passed " and now let us return to our former 
question: What has educated the minds of our people 
up to this status? The pulpit, the press, and the forum 
are powerful forces to educate in this country where our 
free schools, up to a certain point being universal, make 
it possible for all to grasp the three first mentioned forces 
and assimilate the whole. Thus far if granted that the 
pulpit is pure as it should be, that the press is untram- 
meled and the forum unbiased, and that the public schools 
only go far enough to prepare the child for acquiring 
an education, these forces might be considered an unmixed 
blessing if it were not for another factor at work pervad- 
ing all of them and making all of them subservient to its 
interests. That factor is commerce or trade dominated 
still after six thousand years' of practice by the barbarous 
principle of competition. Destitution, degradation and 
slavery along with greed, arrogance and oppression, have 
marked its course from time immemorial until it has riv- 
eted its chains on all classes and conditions of all nations, 
civilized or barbarous, and the people of this country are 
as surely bound in this gigantic octopus as are the people 
of India in their religions castes and prejudices. And 
here again we are confronted with the two antagonistic 
principles before alluded to, more marked and bold in 
relief because their relations are more strained, the one 
impelled by necessity which knows no law, the other by 
an insatiable greed which evades and over-reaches all 
law. The greatest factor in education is commerce, 
because it pervades all the other forces and is reached 
through all of them being a necessary complement, nec- 
essary to their very existence, and inseparable from 
them. But it does not follow that commerce should dom- 
inate all other forces and render them subservient to its 
power, as will be seen to be the case now in this country 
by any one who will take the pains to inquire into the 



IMPERIALISM. 11 

subject. Therefore, we say without fear of successful 
contradiction, commerce is the educational factor which 
is responsible for training the public mind up to that 
point where we are apparently willing to bend our necks 
to receive the yoke of imperialism. In this act of self- 
stultification the people are blinded to all their interests 
by a false sense of duty and patriotism, because forsooth 
a few rich Americans in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and 
Manila, have, by making a noise throughout the country 
that an injury was being done to our commerce, suc- 
ceeded in arousing public sentiment made known through 
the pulpit, the press and all other channels of thought, 
so that this is called a " commercial war," waged for the 
sole purpose of extending and increasing our commerce, 
and for the sake of accomplishing this we are willing to 
submit to a change in our body politic — a step toward a 
condition called imperialism. 

As long as we had abundance of public land in the great 
west subject to homestead, so that a poor, honest and 
industrious man could migrate thither and by almost 
incredible hardships build himself a home and farm, a 
nucleus for a new, prosperous, moral, healthy and intelli- 
gent community, such increase in our commerce was a 
natural, healthy outgrowth of our economic system, an 
enlargement of our trade, a blessing to our country, to 
the individual who engaged in it, and to the entire world. 
Commerce did not dominate these new growths where the 
best that survive of our country's liberties yet remain to 
remind us of the glories of the past. But what can we 
expect of a territory acquired by force already densely 
populated by a class of people ranging in intelligence (or 
ignorance) from the lowest depths of barbarism on the 
entire globe up to as fine a Christian villain as ever cut a 
throat, whose customs, manners and language bear no 
resemblance to our own, and belonging to a race who 
have never made any advance toward civilization, and in 
a climate where the Anglo-American will not prosper. 
Let those who can, argue this question for themselves; 
we will turn our attention to other points. 



12 IMPERIALISM. 

In the closing scenes of the Roman republic we see a 
close resemblance to the present condition of our own, 
and bear in mind that the man who overthrew the 
republic of Rome was the avowed friend of the people, 
and all his movements received their applause. The 
common people were oppressed by the rich, equality was 
proclaimed, but inequality actually existed, wealth and 
commerce concentrated in the hands of a few ambitious 
individuals who so dominated the state that politics 
degenerated into a personal contest between these 
few. In this condition of things Caesar arose, a man who 
had no superior in the state; he espoused the popular 
cause and seemed in fact for a time the champion of 
the people. He caused an Agrarian law to be passed as 
a measure of relief and scattered vast sums of his wealth 
among the poor, feeding thousands of them at his own 
expense —money no doubt which he had wrongfully taken 
from others. His great popularity thus obtained and 
the foundation laid, nothing remained but a pretext to 
cause him to seize the reins. In vain were the eloquent 
appeals of Cicero, the most renowned orator of all times. 
He was banished. The incorruptible Brutus and the 
wealthy and powerful Pompey were swept aside, and 
republican Rome was imperialized without delay. 

The question arises again, could Caesar have done as 
he did under any other conditions except those which 
existed at the time, and what brought about those condi- 
tions? Dr. Lyman Beecher says in one of his great 
speeches: "We must educate! or we must perish by our 
own prosperity." The most remarkable part of Mr. 
Beecher's proposition is the closing phrase. Now, if he 
had said by our own ignorance or negligence or indolence, 
we could have more readily grasped his thought, but ' ' by 
our own prosperity!" That closing word shows that the 
great orator had in his mind's eye, that a time might very 
easily arrive when the church, the state, and the press 
would become so dominated by commerce or the wealth 
of the country that liberty would be endangered and the 
nation likely to perish. No one will deny that this was 



IMPERIALISM. 13 

his meaning, for he goes on to say that "manufactures 
will not cease, commerce will not cast anchor, and agri- 
culture, pushed by millions of free men on her fertile 
soil, will not withhold her corrupting abundance." All 
these would contribute to produce enormous wealth which 
would become concentrated in the hands of a few, as in 
Rome, and enable them to dominate and dictate to the 
state. 

But there are other ways by which we might perish by 
our own prosperity. Only this last year we have had an 
example at our very doors of a nation which, if she has 
not already perished, has suffered defeat, immense loss 
and humiliation, which may truthfully be said to have 
been caused by her own prosperity. Spain, once the 
most powerful of European nations, successful at home 
in expelling the Moors, at the same time that her ships 
crossed the Atlantic and discovered the new world, to the 
possession of which she was given a divine right by the 
pope of Rome, the greatest living ecclesiastic representa- 
tive of Christendom, and she actually did possess at one 
time all of South and Central America, California, Ari- 
zona, New Mexico, Mexico, Texas and Florida, with the 
West Indies islands. Wealth flowed into her coffers by the 
ship-load until she became perfectly glutted with power 
and grandeur; but she made a corrupt use of her vast 
riches, using them to oppress the poor, and failing to 
educate her little people. By her own prosperity, though 
in a different way from that of Rome, she perished, losing 
all her vast possessions and her prestige among the nations 
by the same cause which now threatens us, only operating* 
on different lines. 

History will record that at the close of the nineteenth 
century Spain had reached the climax of centuries of 
retrogression and fell to pieces by disintegration and 
decay. 



14 IMPERIALISM. 



EDUCATIONAL FORCES. 



We are wont to boast that a people who are edu- 
cated can never be enslaved, and to a great extent his- 
tory bears evidence to the truth of the declaration; but if 
we look at this matter of education we will find that it is 
character that we want to form by education. Education, 
then, to be beneficial to us as a nation should produce the 
very highest standard of moral character coupled with 
the best physical and mental training. Of course, now 
the question comes to the average mind, what standard 
of morals would or should prevail to be called the highest? 
We have very properly banished the churches and their 
dogmas and sectarian creeds from our public schools and 
as much as possible from our politics. This is right and 
proper, for much as we respect and love all our churches 
we fear that if any one of them should get control it 
would lead us into a rut which would become narrow and 
more narrow, until we could see nothing beyond the 
channel of its teachings, dogmas, doctrines and creeds, 
so that would not do. But, although we debar the 
churches from our public schools, yet we are glad that 
there are so many of them and that they all teach dif- 
ferences, and we hope they never will unite on any cer- 
tain line, for as the churches are a powerful factor in the 
formation of character, the same thing might occur out- 
side of our schools which we seek to prevent in them by 
excluding the churches. They have the freedom of 
speech and of the press and also the Sabbath school, 
which is, next to our public schools, the greatest factor 
in character building now known under the name of 
schools, but these should be also as nearly as possible 
non-sectarian. But while we would as nearly as possible 
protect our free schools from sectarianism, we need have 



IMPERIALISM. 15 

no fears of introducing God and His word into them, 
not using the Bible as a text-book, but as a guide to 
teachers, pupils, boards of directors, patrons and friends. 
What possible sectarianism can be evolved from the 
" Golden Rule?" or what possible jarring or marring of 
that grand moral standard which we wish to infuse into 
character can occur from the teachings of the decalog? 
or what possible stultification of manhood or womanhood 
can be introduced into character by the sublime yet 
simple words of "The Lord's Prayer?" Besides there 
are certain eternal principles of right and wrong which 
every child will more readily recognize than most grown 
people, because their "hearts have not yet grown familiar 
with the paths of sin nor sown to garner up its bitter 
fruits." 

There are morals and morals which sectarians do not 
teach and which dogmas cannot reason away which are 
never the less recognized by universal manhood, barbar- 
ian or Christian. Let the standard" of morals taught in 
our schools be akin to that which was meant by Jeffer- 
son and by Lincoln, which recognizes the universal 
brotherhood of man. The public schools of our country 
are to-day the only hope of the poor against the encroach- 
ments of wealth in the hands of the unscrupulous. It 
therefore behooves every man or woman, be they rich or 
poor, married or single, Christian or infidel, to give to 
them every encouragement and support which lies in 
their power to give. Out of these schools are going 
every day, every week, and every year a constant and 
increasing stream of young men and young women who 
are to be the future gardians of our republic for weal or 
woe. If this stream be pure and that character, the 
foundations of which are already laid, be sufficiently 
strong and rugged to enable the individual to resist the 
tremendous strain which will at times be brought to bear 
upon it, then our future as a nation is safe. But if that 
stream should become polluted? An Englishman writ- 
ing on American institutions said: "They boast of their 
free institutions. " He acknowledged that the institu- 



16 IMPERIALISM. 

tions were good and prosperous but he could not lose 
sight of the fact that they were worked for all the money 
there was in them, and very often that apparently was 
the only object. When a man writes a treatise on 
science for the sake of getting at the truth regardless 
of anyone else's theory and not for the purpose of build- 
ing up a theory or of making money out of it, he gener- 
ally succeeds and is recognized as a benefactor. When 
a college professor, however, undertakes to teach a 
theory based on certain principles, say of religion or pol- 
itics, and attempts to influence public opinion in that 
direction, be it right or wrong (which question must be 
settled afterward with many disappointments and some 
degree of danger) and all for the sake of the money that 
he can get out of it, such a man can hardly be called a 
public benefactor. A man might spend his life testing 
these hair-brain theories and never come to a knowl- 
edge of the truth. 

This kind of teaching can hardly be introduced into our 
system of public schools without corrupting and destroy- 
ing them. The money power has not yet to any great 
extent exerted a dominating or controlling influence 
over our public schools detrimental to their interests, 
perhaps for the reason that should this stream which 
flows from them become impure or in any manner 
decreased, that is, if a certain class of the poor were cut 
off from them and thus allowed to grow up in ignorance 
(for if a child is debarred from the schools, no matter for 
or by what cause, they rarely acquire an education), soci- 
ety would in the same ratio become impure and caste 
would arise, politics would be influenced, the state would 
degenerate, life and property would not be secure, enter- 
prise would cease, labor be unemployed, and the wealthy 
would wake up to the situation to find themselves con- 
fronted by a mob which, being put down by armed force, 
would result in despotism. There is, however, a class of 
poor who are at this time debarred from the schools, and 
it will not add or detract one iota from the danger to 
argue the fault of parents or anybody else's fault. For 



IMPERIALISM. 17 

the sake of future safety, for the sake of society and for 
humanity, these children should be educated at the public 
expense. 

There is, however, one danger which threatens our 
public schools, and it is the same danger of centraliza- 
tion which is at work in every enterprise, the climax of 
which is reached in the gigantic trusts and combines of 
commerce which bid defiance to all law. That move- 
ment in our schools which seeks to convert a whole town- 
ship into a school district, with a large central building, 
and haul the little fellows five or six miles every winter 
morning to school, is the first that has been made by the 
wealthy to overreach the poor in the schools, and must 
have originated with some Napoleon of finance to cheapen 
the whole business. If this move is carried out it will be 
found to have its origin in the financial view and not for 
the convenience either of the pupils or the patrons, as 
anyone can see at a glance the hardships to these, 
especially to the poor, would be greatly increased, but a 
cheapening would be realized on the principle of co-opera- 
tion. But the people interested should bear in mind that 
it is only a short step from a township to a county, and 
when once the step is taken there is no limit to its appli- 
cation, and we may bid farewell to the " little red school- 
house " and the very source of the purity of our social 
system. 

Of all our institutions, however, our public schools seem 
to be more nearly founded upon the principle that ' ' all 
men are created equal. ' ' Here can come no stately pomp 
or pride derived from hereditary distinction or dominion 
to command our fealty or demand our servility, but the 
rich and the poor, the governor and the governed, the 
children of the president and of the lowliest citizen in the 
land, as well as those of the former master and slave, 
meet and strike hands at the foot of the statue of liberty 
and bring their gifts and offerings to lay upon the altar 
of their common country. May God grant that this will 
ever be so. But if the hand of concentrated wealth can 
find a vulnerable spot in the armor with which this glorious 

2 



18 IMPERIALISM. 

institution seems to be clad it will as surely destroy it as 
it will, unless soon arrested in its course, destroy all our 
liberties and reduce us to the condition of slaves. 



COMBINES AND TRUSTS. 



The danger, then, which seems to threaten us at this 
stage in our development is the concentration of great 
wealth in the hands of unscrupulous individuals and cor- 
porations controlling at the present time all branches of 
commerce and ruling all the industrial and productive 
energies of the country, not by the rules of honest com- 
petition as once understood and applied, but by a com- 
bination of all the wealth engaged in any one line of trade, 
and thus destroying competition and substituting in its 
place an arbitrary set of values and prices fixed by the 
operators, these values and prices being so arranged as 
to give to the wealth engaged its sure profit, and leaving 
to the producer scarcely enough, and sometimes not 
enough, to sustain life. Railroad and telegraph lines are 
brought under control by calculations based upon the 
amount of their earnings, and the price of the farmer's 
grain is fixed for him before he sows his crops, and his 
hogs and cattle before he begins to feed them by the 
aggregation of wealth to which he sells. The producer 
in this case ceases to be a free man, but only a subject 
upon whom the operator works. He is no party to the 
transaction, because he has nothing to say in setting the 
price on the products of his toil, and in so far is a slave 
to the combination. The worst part of it all is that he 
does not know it and will persist in raising grain and 
produce for his master until necessity, which knows no 
law, compels him to retire from the contest. In like 
manner the price of bread and meat is set for the con- 
sumer, not by the man who raises them making a contract 
with him to furnish him pork and flour at so much a 
pound for the coming year, but by the gigantic combina- 
tion through which these articles pass on their way from 



IMPERIALISM. 19 

the producer to the consumer. The consumer, then, is as 
much a slave to the combination as his brother producer. 
And right here fresh complications arise. The producer 
and consumer are arrayed against each other, both have 
a grievance and each blames the other. They who should 
be brothers drift farther and farther apart and finally 
become antagonistic, while the man of wealth shoves his 
hands down deep in -his pockets and reads in the evening 
paper with great satisfaction of his wonderful operations 
on "the board of trade." These two men, then, who 
should be found shoulder to shoulder fighting combines 
and trusts, have nothing in common, and in cases of 
political contests are generally arrayed against each 
other. 

In like manner it may be shown that the retail merchant 
who sells to both the before-mentioned parties is still a 
worse victim, if possible, of the trust and combine than 
either of them. With them the rule only works one way 
— the sword has only one edge, but with him it cuts both 
ways, besides he has to encounter active competition in 
his sales without the privilege of competition in buying, 
and in his dealings with the other two parties he gets the 
ill will of both. Distrust and suspicion are engendered, 
and dishonesty believed, if not proclaimed, until it has 
become an established maxim of trade " honesty cuts no 
ice." Credit, in the common acceptation of the word, is 
destroyed. Now a nation or a community doing business 
without credit is something very strange, but this is the 
actual condition of this country at the present time. 
There is no credit and no risk run except by the retail 
merchant, the man at the foot of the ladder, and if he 
does much of a credit business himself he will be found 
very soon looking for a job. If the combination of wealth, 
which brings all this state of things about, is not a form 
of tyranny tell me in the name of common sense what it 
is. While it brings concentration of power on one hand, 
it works disintegration and corruption on the other, and 
when we consider that eighty of these trusts and com- 
bines, for the purpose of controlling trade, have been 



20 IMPERIALISM. 

formed in this country in the last year, and that the 
attorney-general of the United States has decided that 
congress cannot reach them, and that the legislatures of 
the several states cannot reach them, the situation is 
becoming alarming, and it looks as if we had better bring 
home the army from the Philippines and turn them loose 
on the trusts. 

The poor men of the country are not, however, the 
only victims of these combinations. There are a great 
many rich men and a greater number of moderately 
weathly who for various reasons are not in the com- 
bines. These men find themselves out of business and 
their money lying idle because competition is in a meas- 
ure destroyed and it would be a losing struggle for them 
to engage in a contest against an aggregation which had 
absorbed all the business doing, or being done, along 
that line. Therefore their . capital is lying still and a 
dead weight on their hands; the banks are getting their 
vaults full of this unemployed capital. Gold is flowing 
into the treasury, the papers say, and our surplus is 
increasing rapidly, notwithstanding the expense of the 
war (which two things have no bearing at all on the sub- 
ject and very little on each other) but still it is true and 
interest rates are falling (which is more significant). The 
state will not take back money loaned to the county; men 
who have borrowed money are anxious to pay off their 
mortgages and take a new loan at a less rate of interest 
and money lenders are not anxious to do this. Savings 
institutions are paying less profit yearly; some companies 
who have borrowed at 6 must now loan at 5 per 
cent, so that it is beginning to affect all pretty much 
alike, except those actually engaged in the great com- 
bines. 

What are we going to do about it? is a question now 
frequently asked. One fellow, a great newspaper man 
and politician, is quoted as saying: " First, accept sound 
money; second, accept the Spanish war and imperial- 
ism without asking why; then first destroy all combines, 
have a revenue tariff and income tax, franchise reform 



IMPERIALISM. 21 

and reform of judiciary system." As the eulogian said 
of Bonaparte's character: " Such a medley of contradic- 
tions and at the same time such individual consistencies 
were never united" in a policy. If he accepts sound 
money and also the Spanish war and imperialism, he must 
then hold all the money (silver) in those islands up to a 
standard with gold. He does not say how he will destroy 
combines, whether with bullets or ballots. He ought to 
know that revenue tariff is a tax and that an income 
tax is and has been decided unconstitutional, and that 
franchise and judiciary reform could not be affected with- 
out amendments or violations of the supreme law of our 
country. Some years ago, if this man had talked disinte- 
gration and anarchy in Chicago as loudly as he is now 

l advocating imperialism, he would have been hung as a 
traitor. But the one is just as destructive to our free 
institutions as the other. Whenever we hear an imperi- 
alist who, of course, is a friend of the money power, talk 
of reform in the franchise we may be sure that he means 

i to curtail its freedom; when we hear him speak of reform- 
ing the judiciary we may be sure that he fears its dis- 
criminating judgment and impartial justice. The only 
good thing proposed by this would-be reformer is the 
destruction of all combines or trusts; but here again 
when we hear the avowed champion of imperialism, of 

i which trusts and combines are only one form, declaring 

| himself in favor of destroying himself, we had better let 
him alone and let him do so; the quicker the better. A 

! man is not honest who talks so ; he is only an example of 

j another immoral practice which is an outgrowth and 
product of the present system of commerce, which is 
when other means fail, to lie an honest man out of hon- 
est money by deceit, cunning and misrepresentation. It 

I is on the principle that every man's goods are the best in 
the market, that every merchant is dishonest except the 

l one to whom you are talking; these stories are not only 

I repeated to you over the counter, but they are printed in 
the advertisements of the papers and therefore they 

I must be true, or accepted as true. 

\ 



22 IMPERIALISM. 



LYING A STOCK IN TRADE. 

Every age seems to have some distinguishing feature 
which marks its character. Archaeologists speak of the 
Flint, Stone, Bronze and Iron ages, also the age of Mon- 
uments, Hieroglyphics, Sculpture, Painting, Letters, etc. 
Hereafter they will have a new subject for contemplation, 
in what may be called very appropriately the ' ' Lying 
age." Some very cunningly devised schemes there are 
which, if studied aesthetically, are really artistic and 
beautifully intellectual in themselves, aside from their 
intrinsic value as " sharp practice in business," and it 
would indeed be strange if af ber many years of practice 
on a scale never before excelled there did not result great 
proficiency in this art. So we find in the field of research 
all gradations from the polished literary, whitewashed, 
insinuating, fastidious falsifier, down to the flatfooted, 
slanderous, unf umigated liar who takes no pains to con- 
ceal or excuse his guilt, if indeed he feels conscious of 
any whatever, and all for the sake of what they call mak- 
ing money. It is only competition, they say, which com- 
pels a man to keep up with the rest or he will be sure to 
lose in the race after the dollar. If we don't get that 
fellow's money some one else will. This is just what the 
highwayman will tell you, and you might just as well 
give up your wallet to him as to the next one who 
demands it. 

Competition is defined by one author as u a race in 
which ten men engage and in which one succeeds while 
the other nine lose; " they have the satisfaction, however, 
of being some of them closer than others to winning. 
This makes a gradation in the scale in which the winning 
man gloats over the discomfiture of all the others, while 
the second best turns down eight, and so on down 



IMPERIALISM. 23 

to the last man, who has no consolation. He may be just 
as honest, just as industrious, just as temperate, may 
have labored just as hard and been as painstaking as all 
or any of the others. He may have as nice a wife and 
children to suffer, just as good a heart, just as fine sus- 
ceptibilities, just as sure a trust in God, but one must be 
last in the race and he is the one. Oh what a rancorous, 
heartrending feeling of remorse must that man have 
when he sits down and contemplates that if he had only 
lied a little more he might have won the race. This man 
need not look for sympathy from his fellow man; he is 
down; friends now pass him on the street and look the 
other way; they have no time to devote to the study or 
inspection of a man who allowed nine others to beat him 
lying and so get the start of him in a deal whereby he 
lost what little stake he had and reduced himself and 
family to want. There are scores of these men now to be 
seen in the cities and in the country; you can meet them 
every day, and their number is increasing; they need not 
be pointed out to you; there is a certain "down " appear- 
ance about these men which is unmistakable. In some 
cases they are outcast entirely from their fellow men, 
and, shall we say, outcast from God? No, not yet. 

We cannot dare as crime to brand 
The chastening of the Almighty's hand. 

The greatest struggle of our life thusr far was on an 
occasion when a minister of the gospel undertook to show 
in a sermon preached from the text which tells about Jacob 
cheating Esau out of his heritage, that it was perfectly 
right and proper, in fact, just the thing for old Jacob to 
do just what he did. The minister was an able man, 
skilled in logic and well versed in his profession, and 
brought to bear every argument that apparently could be 
produced in the case, but he failed, at least, to be con- 
vincing. How we pity such a man. He showed in every 
movement of his body, every tone of his voice and every 
lineament of his features that he was compelled to preach 
just as he did, yet all the time he did not believe a word 
of it himself, and knew that, let Jacob be what he might 



24 IMPERIALISM. 

afterwards or before, he was a party to a swindle when 
he cheated his brother out of his just inheritance. 
Another definition for competition is that it is perfectly 
honorable for a railroad company to charge 50 cents for 
twenty miles when there is no other road by which the 
same station can be reached, whereas, if there were other 
roads going to the same station it would be policy to 
charge only 25 cents. On the same principle, then, 
a merchant, may mark up his goods where there is 
no competition and charge about what he pleases, or at 
least about what his customers will stand. 

If there is anything proved by these examples, which 
are true and too common to be denied, it is that there is 
very little honest competition used in trade except so far 
as it is a protection to the merchant, and not at all for 
the benefit of the purchaser, unless that customer should 
elect to walk twenty miles to beat the railroad or drive 
twenty miles from home to buy his goods. A considera- 
tion here which comes to the mind of the average indi- 
vidual seeking after light is, if the present process of 
squeezing continues, how long it will be until the rail- 
road and the merchant will both be looking around for 
men to buy their tickets and purchase their goods? 



TRAMPS. 



A few years ago it was an uncommon thing to see a 
tramp in this country. It is true that there were some, 
and also that we were well acquainted with Dickens and 
other English authors' descriptions of the footpads of 
England, but in our country there were comparatively 
few. Now we can count them by the hundred thousand, 
and they are on the increase. Whatever may be said of 
the character of tramps in general, as to their laziness, 
immorality, ignorance or otherwise, it is conceded by all 
that they are a nuisance, especially to a poor man who is 
about to sit down with his little family and eat his scant 
meal in peace after thanks to the Giver of all good, and 



IMPERIALISM. 25 

he is about to put the first installment in place to be con- 
fronted by a lone, lorn, weary, travel-stained fellow mor- 
tal who, hat in hand, humbly begs to be remembered at 
the Throne of Grace, too, and has a story to tell which 
we must hear. We are now, like Saint Paul, between 
two straits. We remember that Christ said, be not for- 
getful to entertain strangers, etc., and also the story of 
the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule confront us. 
Moreover, we have just returned thanks to God for His 
bounty. What shall we do? Common sense, at last, 
asserts its verdict; we cannot entertain all the tramps 
who come along and the man goes, muttering maledic- 
tions, while we feel we have committed a sin. In vain 
do we argue the case; the community expects us to sup- 
port our family and educate our little ones; we cannot do 
this and feed the tramps, but the community at large 
also furnishes the tramps for us to feed and somebody 
feeds them or they would starve. These people are on 
the increase; soon they will be a subject for legislation. 
If we had Canada thistles to deal with we could burn and 
otherwise destroy them; or if we had rabbits, as in Aus- 
tralia, we could let the job to some enterprising man to 
kill them all off for so many million dollars, but these are 
men and we cannot legally kill them; they are degraded, 
dissipated men and we cannot reform them without harsh 
measures and restrictions on their freedom, and this, 
because it will soon have to be done, will have to be by 
government at government expense. It is in vain to 
argue the cause of these tramps. A greater question is, 
how are we to prevent the growth of tramps? A condi- 
tion of society most certainly does exist which produces 
tramps, and that condition has been brought to us by the 
domineering influence of the power of wealth over the 
interests of the poorer people in our land, once the land 
of Liberty, the land of Washington, Jefferson and Lin- 
coln, now in the imperial power of wealth, as foretold by 
Webster. 

Examine he preamble to the Constitution of the 
United States and you will see that its object apparently 



26 IMPERIALISM. 

is to promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to posterity. Now, no sane person will 
claim that it means anything but freedom to do right in 
the sight of God by our fellow men. It cannot mean, in 
any sense, liberty to do a wrong. That would be license 
or crime. By the laws of our country, we become 
citizens at a certain age, but it is our duty to exercise 
the right of citizenship for the greatest good, both to 
ourselves and to our fellow citizens. Are we doing this 
to-day under the present economical conditions? It will 
not help the situation to construct theories of positivism, 
socialism or nationalism. They are behind our age and 
do not fill the conditions of universal progressive intel- 
ligence. We have examples of their application and 
results in India, Egypt and China. Men's lives cannot 
be made to run in grooves for ages without leading to 
caste, priesthood, and empire, or to feudalism, peasantry, 
and slavery, all of which conditions so far as we are con- 
cerned have, we hope, passed away, never to be revived. 
Within the last twenty five years we have assimilated a 
foreign population of over ten millions. Our success 
has not depended so much upon ourselves as upon the 
good faith and public spirit of the majority of these 
immigrants, but there is a minority, and sometimes in a 
popular government minorities rule. In all our large 
cities, are whole colonies of these respectable minorities 
who cannot and do not speak, read or write our lan- 
guage; who care nothing for our history, traditions, lit- 
erature, or laws. Armed with the tremendous responsi- 
bility of the ballot, they are marched to the polls at each 
election and voted by any demagogue who can secure 
their favor by pandering to their prejudices and passions, 
if he does not actually buy their suffrages. Such power 
as this in the hands of unscrupulous wealth is a menace 
to free government. Justice to the majority of the for- 
eigners who come to our country and soon become 
thorough Americans, justice to ourselves and to the very 
life and future iof our country, demand that the govern- 
ment should reach out and put a stop to this sort of thing 



IMPERIALISM. 27 

instead of crusading for commerce in the orient at the 
expense of all the people of the United States. If we 
must have imperialism, let it begin at home among our 
own people, where it will be better understood, if not 
more highly appreciated. The army might, with great 
effect and some good, be used to protect the innocent 
from violence and bring the guilty to justice in our own 
land first, and then, if need be, we might reform other 
countries at our leisure. 



THE RACE PROBLEM. 



Being much interested in the present political situa- 
tion as regards the race problem in the United States, 
especially since we are about to take under our wings so 
many millions of the most conglomerated mixture of 
human beings on the face of the globe, one-half of whom 
are paupers or likely to become so, being already fed by 
the government, and doing all this for the ' ' sake of 
humanity," would it not be well for those who attempt to 
discuss this question of race to place themselves outside 
of personal interests or political "pulls," and take an 
abstract view of the existing conditions? Consider that 
we have in some of our largest cities a population which 
makes it hard to maintain a municipal government up to 
the standard of our boasted civilization; that in Utah, 
one of the great states of the west, polygamy is a com- 
mon practice. The writer remembers reading in 1856, in 
the first republican platform ever published, these words: 
4 ' Resolved, That we are opposed to the twin relics of bar- 
barism, polygamy and slavery. ' ' Yet there is to be a 
test case, perhaps, in the next congress involving the 
right of a man from Utah to have more than one wife. 
All these cases are proper subjects of criticism, and have 
been repeatedly dealt with. Anarchists have been hung 
in Chicago, polygamists have been prosecuted in Utah, 
outlaws have been run down and shot in the southwest, 
and striking miners have been shot to death with muskets 



28 IMPERIALISM. 

in the great state of Illinois, but when you come to deal- 
ing with men who make a practice of shooting and out- 
raging negroes throughout the southern states, we draw 
the line. If the era of good feeling has come and the 
scars of war and battle between the sections are to be 
healed we are ready to bid it Godspeed and to be frater- 
nized forevermore. There are, however, only two ways 
by which an honest man can fraternize with a criminal — 
either the honest man must descend to a level with the 
criminal, or the criminal must be reformed. In that 
grand political pageant wherein a president of the United 
States marched side by side with an ex-confederate gen- 
eral, the latter conditions were fully realized. If this lit- 
tle leaven will leaven the whole lump, then the race prob- 
lem is likely to be solved and lawlessness throughout the 
south will end. Whatever were the motives of the pres- 
ident, the " bright particular star" of that pageant was 
Gen. Joe Wheeler, and no political pull can take from 
him the laurels won and the prestige gained by the manly 
and patriotic course he has taken, not only in the Spanish 
war, but ever since the surrender at Appomattox. 

We read in the papers occasionally of the white man's 
burden. What it means to us or to other nations in the 
world might or might not be a subject worthy of thought; 
if the word "white" had not been stricken from so many 
public records in the states in the last thirty years, 
on purpose to make it legal and place it beyond all con- 
troversy, that what is meant by a "man" is not defined 
as white or black, or whether his ancestors were of any 
particular race ethnologically or otherwise considered, so 
that he be a man. It is the very essence of parrot-like 
dogmatic nonsense to talk about the race problem or the 
"white man's burden," and such terms have only been in 
use, as applied to this country, since we have set out in 
our career of imperialism. We have races and races in 
this country, and colors and colors. Any one can see 
that this is only a pretext of the imperialists to give them 
an excuse to attempt to reform the franchise, so as to cut 
down the number of voters in this country, and form 



IMPERIALISM. 29 

another link in the chain now forging to bind the poor 
man to the soil, and make him a hereditary fief of his rich 
and soon-to-be lordly master and owner. The men for 
whose freedom Abraham Lincoln died a martyr by the 
assassin's bullet (so history says); the men for whose free- 
dom one hundred and ten thousand Union soldiers were 
actually killed in battle, besides all who were maimed 
and died otherwise, are now being shot and hung by law- 
less hands, and no arm lifted to defend the innocent or 
virtuous who may suffer with the guilty, and this is 
spoken of as a part of the " white man's burden." Mob 
law is taking the place of the policy power, and the only 
remedy yet proposed is a reform of the franchise. So far 
as we could see by the speeches and enactments spread 
upon the Congressional Record in the last congress, no 
man was so fearless and open in expressing his senti- 
ments, nor so little called in question, as Mr. Butler, of 
North Carolina, who made the sweeping assertion that 
the north was wrong and the south right in the civil 
war, and proved it by history and supreme court decisions 
without being contradicted. But his speech was in har- 
mony with the avowed purpose of the imperialists to 
bring about a reform in the franchise. This, then, is the 
race question so far as it concerns the United States. 
Shall these men be allowed to exercise the rights given 
them by the perils and issues of the civil war, or shall 
they not? Shall they be allowed to exercise the God- 
given right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 
or shall these rights be denied them by force and with- 
out due process of law? 

This is the race problem in a nutshell and if anyone else 
can make anything else out of it they have the right to 
do so with or without our consent. It is no more a ques- 
tion of race than is the tramp problem, or the labor ques- 
tion, or socialism. It is a question forced upon us by the 
conditions which have been brought about in this coun- 
try in the last quarter of a century by the dominating- 
influence of wealth in our political system, forcing us either 
to accept feudalism and imperialism, or socialism, disin- 



30 IMPERIALISM. 

tegration and anarchy. It has no relation whatever to 
the race problem which confronts the nations of Europe 
who have holdings in Africa and Asia. With this latter 
question, however, the United States are about to be 
deeply involved, so much so that only time can develop 
the tremendous issues to us which may grow out of it. 
In the meantime, however, we are far more interested in 
the events which are transpiring at home. For over a 
century, now, our system of government has stood the 
strain which it was natural to suppose would be brought 
to bear upon it by the combined wealth and aristocracy 
of imperialism from abroad, and as long as these influ- 
ences were exerted from a foreign standpoint we have 
had no trouble in repelling their encroachments. We have 
so far been proof against the free trade policy of Great 
Britain, although the commercial forces of England have 
spent, through the Cobden club and other channels, mil- 
lions of dollars in attempts to corrupt public sentiment 
in our country. Great political parties have been swayed 
by these economic theories, and governors of states, rep- 
resentatives and presidents have been elected on the 
strength of the agitation, and yet, owing to the good 
common horse sense of our people, little permanent 
impression has been left upon the minds of our voters 
that will prove detrimental to our politics. It has, in 
fact, proven rather a benefit than an injury; and so it 
would prove with any foreign policy attempted to he 
foisted upon us, because our system is so entirely differ- 
ent in many ways from all other systems of government. 
It would be well enough, however, for those gentle- 
men who are indulging in criticisms and villifications of 
the life and character of Thomas Jefferson et al., to 
pause and consider the effect produced by the Declara- 
tion of Independence upon the civilized world at that 
time, and what were the events which led to educating 
the public mind up to the point of receiving and endors- 
ing its principles. That this form of government," as 
Lincoln said "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the 
principle that all men are created equal" set up here by 



IMPERIALISM. 31 

these men whom we call the " founders " was an innova- 
tion in the line of civics and economics, the greatest 
that the world ever witnessed or ever will again witness, 
there is no doubt in the mind of any sane person, be they 
born in America or on any other portion of God's earth. 
And, also, that it was a move in the right direction for 
the benefit of the whole human race, having the approval 
of all lovers of justice and humanity, is equally as well 
received and understood, but the time has apparently 
come when the characters of these men are to be assailed, 
their principles and works impugned and derided, and 
themselves classed as visionists, socialists and anarch- 
ists, because these same principles and self-evident 
truths, these God-given rights, stand to-day an impedi- 
ment in the pathway of imperialism. These two ele- 
ments in our political system stand now, as ever, 
opposed to each other. As time passes they are becom- 
ing more and more antagonistic. It may be that we can 
decide this matter by the ballot, which is the only weapon 
left in the hands of the one party, with which he may 
contend for his life and liberty against the other party 
whom, though not so numerous, are clothed with power 
and wealth and organization, the most complete that the 
world has ever beheld or dreamed of. It would be in 
vain for the poor man, though greatly outnumbering the 
other party, to attempt anything like resistance to this 
army of gladiators, most of whom, like Spartacus, have 
come up from slavery themselves. If resistance is made 
at all, it must be made on the line of civil strife with the 
ballot while that weapon yet remains. Otherwise we 
must prepare ourselves as best we can for a sudden and 
wonderful change which will shortly come to pass in our 
political system, if indeed it is not already here. Pre- 
pare, then, to burn the farewell address of Washington 
as well as the Emancipation proclamation of Lincoln. 
Erase from the monuments of Jefferson, Washington, 
Madison, and all others, the name of "Patriot" and 
substitute anarchist in its stead. 



32 IMPERIALISM. 

Call on Whittier to come out of his grave and revise 
his poems, especially the " Prisoner for Debt." Train a 
modern battery on the statue of /'Liberty enlightening 
the World. " It is now become a farce. Erect a pantheon 
in the city of Washington, having for its basis the Dar- 
winian " Theory of Evolution" and " The Descent of 
Man," to take the place of the Christian religion. Per- 
haps some of the missing links may be found among our 
new possessions, and some of the gods to adorn this new 
pantheon may yet arise in our midst before the clash of 
this war of extermination for the sake of humanity is yet 
brought to a close. Or it may be that the exclusive 
island of Jekyl is destined to produce both the gods and 
the site for a pantheon which will be erected to com- 
memorate the " Heroic age " of America. Of course this 
is all speculation as yet, but one is excusable in dealing 
with any series of facts for a little indulgence once in a 
while in speculation. 

The question of cheap living and low wages is by one 
writer brought before us in The Youth's Companion of 
April 20th. The writer of this article thinks that it is a 
mooted question, whether high wages is a cause of high 
living or the contrary, without wasting time in consider- 
ing the most important fact in connection with the sub- 
ject which is, that without high wages high living could 
not be maintained, in fact, would be impossible; also that 
a low standard of living could not be improved very 
materially without a higher wage. "It is," he says, 
"not worth while to consider the cost to families who 
have means — it is an important subject however, to those 
who work for daily wages" — and the minimum (of cheap- 
ness) is reached by the colored laborer of the south who 
consumes 75 cents per week, his staples being pork and 
cornmeal, a log cabin his shelter and cast off clothing his 
raiment. He attributes this to the primitive wants of the 
laborer, and says further if these primitive wants could 
be raised to $3 per week the country would feel the result 
in the increased market of its products. 



IMPERIALISM. 33 

What a field is here indicated for expanding our com- 
merce, either for or not for humanity's sake. In the first 
place, the idea that a man who only earns 75 cents a 
week should be expected to expend $3, is something new 
and unique in economics and beyond our present compass 
in that line, and we will leave it to be studied out by some 
one more versed in financial problems. For our part, we 
are willing to enter the sea of speculation at times, but 
not to the fathomless depths of the above proposition. 
His proposition, however, u that it is not worth while to 
consider the cost to families who have means," seems to 
us to admit of further demonstration. We take the fact 
that it is as important to consider what a man spends as 
it is what he earns. If the rich man can consume $500 
at a feast while his poor neighbor consumes $5, there is 
bought for the purpose $505 worth of the products of the 
community, and, also, this amount of money has gone on 
its rounds to make glad the hearts of other people. But 
if the rich man is too close and miserly to spend more 
than $5 while his poor friend is unable to spend more than 
50 cents, the whole case is changed, and only $5.50 worth 
of products consumed. There are phases and phases 
to this never-ending but all-important subject, which a 
man may or may not consider it worth while to look at 
when he is making out a case, either against the despised 
poor or in favor of the wealth that is bringing about the 
condition that necessitates such a low standard of living 
in the ranks of the citizens of the great republic of 
America. 



THE LABOR QUESTION. 



Before the civil war there were in the southern states, 
as we all know, at least four distinct castes, as plainly 
marked as those of India or China, and these castes and 
conditions were brought about by the concentration of 
capital in the hands of the slave owners, making the 
greatest contrast between the laborer and his employer 



34 IMPERIALISM. 

ever witnessed since the dawn of authentic history, unless 
it was exceeded by the Spaniards in their treatment of 
the aborigines of Cuba, which amounted to extermina- 
tion. The civil war was expected to change all this, but 
has it done so? Ask yourselves, honest people, if the 
condition of the black man is any better to-day if he is 
obliged to live as above described, and then ask your- 
selves, yeUaboring millions of the northern states, how 
long it will be until your condition will be the same as 
his is to-day. This question of labor, as it is generally 
understood, or misunderstood, in this day .and age is a 
most hopeless mass of intellectual entanglement out of 
which it would seem nothing but chaos would ever result. 
It has been so much spoken of as opposed to capital that 
one never thinks of the one without, according to the 
association of ideas, being reminded of the other. Also 
it has been with about the same degree of reason, divided 
into productive and unproductive labor. The latter 
division does not seem to us either capable of definition 
or conception. 

There are, however, some facts in regard to labor by 
which we may yet recognize its character and possibilities. 
Labor is an effort to sustain life. Applied to man three 
things are generally requisite: Food, clothing and shel- 
ter. These necessaries of life are obtained from the 
earth and the elements by labor. The whole man then 
enters into this effort with his intellectual, moral and 
physical forces, and of course the higher these forces are 
trained and cultured the greater will be the effect in their 
application. The savage, with his bow and arrow, has 
to use at times the very highest intellectual and mora] 
efforts to enable him to overcome and capture his game; 
therefore, the North American Indian has never been 
surpassed in all the cunning and arts of the trail and 
chase. No food, shelter or clothing was ever obtained 
without labor first producing them, although the thief 
might afterwards steal them, the plunderer take them by 
force, or the cunning and unscrupulous obtain them by 
deception and fraud. It is easy enough in this connec- 



IMPERIALISM. 35 

tion to conceive how one man became a farmer, another 
a herdsman, another a fisherman, and on through the 
whole list of industries, and how these varied employ- 
ments gave rise to exchange, barter and trade, and these 
in turn calling for the use of money to represent values. 
But do not lose sight of the fact that unless labor first 
produces an article of commerce the other two powers, 
theft and fraud, could never obtain it. Labor, then, is the 
only honest ineans by which anything of value is pro- 
duced, and the primary cause of all property, all accumu- 
lation, all wealth, it matters not whether that wealth is 
dug out of a gold mine or fished out of the sea; grown 
in the farmer's field or gathered from the herdsman's 
flock. Other elements soon enter into the scope of the 
j possibilities of labor; exchange and trade have intro- 
duced money, and mone;^ introduces transportation and 
storage, and these in turn introduce a new kind of labor 
employed and paid for with money. Whatever may have 
been the cause of strife and war upon the earth it is cer- 
I tain that the prime object of all wars have been indem- 
; nity or plunder, whichever you may call it, and one 
author says prisoners taken in war became so numerous 
that but two things remained to be done with them — kill 
them or make slaves of them — and the latter expedient, 
being considered the most humane, originated human 
slavery, a very cheap kind of labor indeed. 

The Phoenicians were the first great commercial nation, 
and they also introduced navigation as a new factor in 
transportation. They were also the first nation known 
to buy and sell slaves as chattels. The Carthagenians, a 
colony of Phoenicians, followed them in this respect, and 
Rome, coming in contact with Carthage in war, adopted 
the slave system and soon became, as she was greatest in 
everything else, the greatest slave owning power in the 
world. So we have the cheapest labor system of the 
world introduced by the first great commercial power of 
the world. 

What is meant by cheap labor here is boughten labor. 
The only difference between free labor and slavery is in 



36 IMPERIALISM. 

this case, a free man sells his own labor; a slave's labor 
is used or sold by some other party and the slave himself 
is no party to the contract; also, a free man may labor or 
not as he elects, but a slave must work or be punished, 
or starve and die — not such a great difference or distinc- 
tion after all, when we come to consider our modern sys- 
tem of labor as compared to that of former times. It has 
come to that stage in our country when a laborer is 
obliged to work or starve, and we have laws on our stat- 
ute books to punish the chronic idler. The greatest hard- 
ship in connection with the subject is that the wages are 
fixed by other parties and the laboring man ceases to be 
a factor in the contract, and of course to that extent is a 
slave. We do not deny the right of the state to punish 
vagrants if vagrancy is a crime against society, but with 
equal propriety it might be argued that the cunning 
deception and falsifying tactics which rob labor of its 
hard earned wages, saying nothing of fraud and theft, 
are also a crime and should be as certainly overhauled 
and punished. But our civil code of laws is founded upon 
the Justinean code of Rome, which originated in a con- 
dition of society where the people and the state both 
owned slaves, and of course all legislation at that time in 
regard to labor meant slave labor, and as applied to our 
times is only a relic of barbarism. We do not wish to be 
misunderstood in this matter of laws. They are neces- 
sary and should be obeyed. But they should be so mod- 
eled as to meet the wants of the community, to be impar- 
tial in their application, and to protect the weak and 
restrain the strong and violent elements in society. The 
usages and customs in vogue in mediaeval times can 
hardly be made to serve the purpose now that they did 
then without undergoing as great change in their elemen- 
tal principles as have taken place in civil government and 
in social organization in the civilized world since that 
period. And it is only reasonable to suppose that laws 
and their administration in government should keep pace 
with the advancement of the world in intelligence and 



IMPERIALISM. 37 

virtue and all that is included in a higher state of civili- 
zation than that which existed a thousand years ago. 

The upheaval of nations and races which preceded and 
succeeded the fall of the Roman empire brought to the 
surface the Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon race, whose laws 
and customs, though differing in many ways from the 
Roman, still had many points in common, among which 
are those relating to labor. A new element in the prob- 
lem of labor began about this time to take prominence, 
although it had been recognized as a factor by the Phoe- 
nicians, the Carthagenians and the Romans. The bar- 
baric hordes, who displaced the Goths and other Germans, 
seem to have placed but little value on locality or lands, 
but relied solely on plunder. The German races, how- 
ever, were a more pastoral or agricultural people, and 
land with them, from their peculiar institution of town- 
ship, soon took the form of home and country. Patriot- 
ism was born of this race of people, and from them we 
have derived all our ideas of liberty and personal freedom 
and the traditional or common law. Land having now 
become an active factor in the question of labor, a new 
system was reared on the ruins of the old, having two 
objectives — one to ameliorate the condition of the slave 
or laborer, the other to make more stable the rights of 
the owner or master. To attain both objects location 
became necessary, both the slave and his master became 
attached to the land, and the new condition was called 
the feudal system. 

This system, while it was a step in advance in the 
interest of the slave, was also a move toward perma- 
nence in the status of the wealthy element, and soon 
! originated titled and heriditary aristocracy in the new 
! forms of government which succeeded the Roman 
I empire. The bettering of the condition of the laboring 
man was principally brought about by Christianity, then 
| practiced in its original purity, opposing instead of 
^compromising with, and thereby becoming to some 
extent distorted with, Pagan customs and superstitions 
as was afterward the case. Ever since this period, how- 



38 IMPERIALISM. 

ever, Christianity has exerted a wonderful influence on 
the condition of the laboring man. 

This attachment to the soil, while it was a great bene- 
fit, had also become a necessity to all for several 
reasons, one of which was subsistence; and here again, 
labor came to the rescue. All historians in describing 
the conditions of countries and peoples, and their 
gradual advancement from barbarism, to what is 
termed civilization, have left out of their record, and 
seem to have failed to grasp the fact, that all the 
improvement that has ever been attempted and accom- 
plished is either no improvement at all or it is a 
step toward the elevation of the whole human race, 
which certainly must have included the slave or laborer 
as a factor. Considered on these lines, then, the feudal 
system was in its time a blessing to humanity. It ele- 
vated the slave to the dignity of a laboring man, though 
still in a servile condition; but he was recognized as a 
necessary factor in performing the labor which had 
become absolutely requisite both in the mine, in the field 
and on the ocean, to furnish to all the classes above him 
as well as to himself the means of subsistence. Satis- 
fied with the little credit thus given him, he put his 
shoulder to the wheel, and the world moved on apace. 
Again as society was then divided into castes and 
classes, and as the Slav or Mongol nations had for cen- 
turies plundered Europe, and to prevent its recurrence, 
as well as to make the system itself more safe and per- 
manent, he furnished the soldiers who stood guard over 
all and made it a possibility. The Slavs themselves see- 
ing its benefit also settled down and, but for the invasion 
of the Magyars and Turks, soon promised to be per- 
manently located and nationalized. In and through all 
this struggle and turmoil waged for place and power by 
the ambitious greed of the wealthy and aristocratic, we 
see the poor and despised laboring man as the mainstay 
and support of the entire structure in peace or war. 
Toilers built the Pyramids of Egypt, the Acropolis of 
Greece, the Appian way and Coliseum of Rome. They 



IMPERIALISM. 39 

studded the Rhine and other rivers of Europe with cas- 
tles and adorned these with beautiful sculpture and 
paintings. They furnished the soldiers of Alexander, of 
Cassar, and of Charlemagne. These could not have con- 
quered the world without them. Marlborough led them 
to victory at Blenheim, Napoleon at Austerlitz, and 
Wellington at Waterloo. They followed Columbus and 
Pizarro and Cortez to the New World, and even the 
aristocratic George Washington and the visionary Jef- 
ferson, urged them on to victory on the plains of Sara- 
toga, and at the siege of Yorktown, and to crown all, 
they triumphed over themselves at Gettysburg. What 
have they not done to uphold the governments and save 
the sinking fortunes of aristocracy in the world's his- 
tory? Various inventions were made about the time of 
the Turkish invasion of Europe, and the culmination of the 
Mohammedan conquests. The discoveries of Copernicus 
and Galilei, in establishing the sciences on a firm basis; 
the invention of printing, giving a great impetus to the 
dissemination of learning, and the practical use of the 
compass in navigation, all caused increased activity and 
variety in labor, which laid the way for the discovery of 
America by Columbus, which, taken as a whole, was the 
greatest impetus ever given to labor, and furnished the 
grandest hopes for its elevation, as it furnished the 
widest field for its activity. 



FREE LABOR AND LIBERTY. 

It would seem, however, on looking back over this 
period in the history of labor, that but for one element 
entering into the question during the colonial period of 
America, a backward step would have been taken in the 
condition of labor on this new continent. That element 
was religious liberty or freedom of conscience, to attain 
which, civil liberty became a necessary adjunct. Reli- 
gious liberty meant, to those people who came to America 
to escape persecution at the hands of other Christian 



40 IMPERIALISM. 

denominations, more than the right to think. It meant 
liberty to worship God with all that that implies. With 
it is coupled freedom of speech and of the press, and the 
regulation of their daily lives in harmony with their 
religious belief. This led up to and finally culminated in 
civil liberty and in laying the foundation for such a 
politico-religious structure among a community, all of 
whom were poor men, opposed to slavery of any descrip- 
tion, had to include free labor eventually; and land being 
plenty and 'of little money value, except the labor neces- 
sary to clear and fence it, such free labor, in connection 
with the ownership of land, inaugurated the American 
farming system, in which the slave or laborer became at 
once owner and proprietor, a combination of all the 
classes of the feudal system merged in one individual. 
The New England farmer, with his government on his 
shoulder, his church in his pocket and his land under his 
feet, was at that time the highest type of laboring man 
the world had yet produced, and we may cast about to-day 
to find his equal, if indeed, he has any at this time. We 
have now traced in a manner the average condition of the 
laboring man from remote ages up to the beginning of 
our own government, and we see that shorn of all rubbish 
or visionary speculation he has no peer. Of course there 
are many phases of this subject which we have left out, 
as we did not intend to attempt writing a history of the 
world. It might be noted here, however, that the Phoe- 
nicians did away with this kind of independent free labor 
and substituted slavery in its stead. The Carthagenians 
did the same, and Rome, under the empire, worked the 
lands almost entirely by slaves. We would like to leave 
this man, in whom labor has reached its maximum, in all 
his pristine glory, and point back to him as the founder 
of the American Republic and the father and type of the 
American laborer, for, in fact, he should be both. Let 
those who will impugn his memory or his record and draw 
whatever conclusion may best suit them; for our part, 
after the lapse of three hundred years, we lift our hat to 
this man and thank God that one example, at least, has 



IMPERIALISM. 41 

been furnished us of nobility among the laboring class 
worthy of emulation. 

This system of free labor combined with ownership of 
land has continued, in a more or less varied form, to be 
the ruling factor in our country's progress from the time 
of the landing of the Pilgrims to the present time, though 
during all this time subject to great fluctuations. It has 
been the chief incentive which has brought emigration 
to our shores and the greatest of all the forces which 
have worked in support of our system of government ' 'of 
the people, for the people and by the people," and in its 
practical operation it should have done away with feudal- 
ism and imperialism. Free labor has built our railroads 
and constructed all our public works, operated our mines 
and made new states out of the wilderness. It has 
changed the face of an entire continent and brought pros- 
perity and happiness to more people than all other forces 
combined. It has produced a citizenship of which repub- 
lican Rome in her proudest days never dreamed, although 
" in that elder day to be a Roman was greater than a 
king." It has produced an inventive genius which has 
revolutionized the world of practical science; created a 
heroism and hardihood which put to shame the age of 
chivalry, and a valor and patriotism in the American 
character upon which the civilized world to-day looks 
with awe, admiration and respect. Whether this element 
of free labor was the real cause which established all our 
civil and religious liberty is now, says one man, u a mooted 
question." Daniel Webster claimed it for New England. 
In one of his great speeches (reply to Hayne) he says: 
" Where American liberty first had its birth * * * 
and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest 
monuments of its glory and on the very spot of its ori- 
gin." Jefferson claims it for Virginia on his epitaph: 
" Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the 
Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom," etc. Both 
claims are valid, for the same element was at work at the 
same time in both sections and led in both up to the same 
purpose, both civil and religious liberty on the principle 



42 IMPERIALISM. 

that ' ■ all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among 
which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that 
to secure those rights governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. ' ' 

We assert that this declaration of principles, sweeping 
away as it did, all former theories, was the direct out- 
growth of the improved condition of the laborer in the 
New World. It has only partially succeeded so far, and 
if it fails entirely it will be the most complete and disas- 
trous of all the failures of the human race. The equality 
claimed in the declaration is now looked upon as at least 
visionary. 



EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW. 

As to quibbles in regard to the mental or physical 
(which includes the moral) structure of men compared 
with one another at birth or at maturity of manhood, this 
question of equality has nothing to do except so far as 
the safety of any form of government is concerned; espe- 
cially a popular one the inequalities of nature, if falling 
below the standard, should be protected from violence, 
insult and oppression by their stronger brethren whose 
stronger forces should, if inclined to lead them to such 
acts of violence and oppression, be equally restrained. 
And herein lies the essence of the whole subject, and the 
true motive of all government. The idea that an individ- 
ual, because he is by nature stronger mentally or phys- 
ically than his fellows, has the inalienable right to mis- 
treat, defraud and oppress them is a case of the survival 
of the fittest and, as such, only a usage of barbarism. 
On the same principle if an individual is weak, mentally 
or physically, it does not follow that he should be trod- 
den upon by his stronger brother or be obliged to com- 
pete with him in these lines or succumb to the inevitable 
results of such competition. This is the case as viewed 



IMPERIALISM. 43 

from the standpoint of natural inequalities and as an 
argument in this connection has no bearing on the sub- 
ject. It is the duty of the state to protect the weak 
and restrain the strong, as Webster said: "To shield 
the innocent from violence and bring the guilty to public 
justice, whoever may protect him in his crime or whoever 
may partake of his plunder. ' ' If, then, this equality here 
spoken of does not mean one of nature, which could not 
include a whole class, for there are the same inequalities 
by nature existing among all classes and conditions of 
man, whereby " the Greek slave was taken as a model of 
physical manhood, while Alexander the Great was a short, 
stoop-shouldered, hooked-nosed individual, we must look 
for its true definition on some other line. Judging from 
what has been written and spoken by our best men 
capable of forming an opinion we must conclude that this 
equality is an inherited right to ail men given, because 
they are born men and not animals, all who are of the 
human race. God Himself makes no distinctions and is 
no respecter of persons. 

Having now convinced ourselves, if no one else, of the 
proper meaning of this word "equality," we are con- 
fronted by two principles, which appear to enter into the 
practical workings of equality before the law. It has 
been found out by practice, and of course that practice 
goes back to barbarism, too, that exact justice in political 
economy has not proved as successful as what is called 
utility; hence justice and law are not synonymous terms, 
but only reconciled on the principle that some cases arise 
where justice to the individual may work injustice to the 
community as a whole, or in other words, it is better to 
injure the individual by withholding some of his rights, 
than to injure the whole community by granting them. 
This is called the theory of utilitarianism. The greatest 
objection to be raised against this theory as a substitute 
for justice is the fact that it is such, and as such is not 
justice. We would prefer to stand by another relic in 
the Roman law, which says: u Let justice be done 
although the universe should collapse." But this, car- 



44 IMPERIALISM. 

ried out in connection with our modern civilization, would 
not give enough advantage at all times to the wealthy 
over the weak and unfortunate, hence it is considered 
best to give more latitude to those who handle the wealth 
than to those who actually produce it; or, in other words, 
the laboring man. This is seen at once in the law of 
compensaticn. If a rich citizen, say in Cuba, loses his 
stake by reason of the Spanish war, or if he lost it or not, 
only so he can make it appear so, he will be reimbursed by 
the government. But if a poor citizen should lose his life or 
limb, having no property to lose, his family would have a 
hard time to convince the government, or any one con- 
nected with it, that any recompense should be granted 
them. Again, the men who loaned money to the govern- 
ment, at a time when its very necessities compelled it to 
borrow and pay a high rate of interest, have been paid 
and overpaid on the same principle of utility, while the 
laborers who did the fighting, endured all the hardships 
and suffered all the casualties of a great war, have 
received very meager, stinted recompense for the loss of 
life, health and limb, and many of them have died for 
want of it. 

One of the greatest arguments in favor of the utilita- 
rian principle is that of security to the state as well as to 
the individual. The security, safety and sovereignty of 
the state is necessary in order to protect the citizen in 
his rights and make him safe and secure in the posses- 
sion of life and property. Laws, then, are made with the 
view of maintaining the strength and dignity of the state 
at the expense of the individual. The sovereignty of the 
state must be upheld, though the individual perish. This 
is the same principle on which rests the " divine right of 
kings," the same which inspired Louis XIV to exclaim: 
' 'The State ! I am the State ! ' ' 

If this same principle of utility versus justice was con- 
ducted on the line of equity, with a view of approaching 
toward a reasonable degree of justice, it might become a 
success, for the character of mankind, by being contin- 
ually accustomed to dealing with honesty and integrity, 



IMPERIALISM. 45 

would soon arrive at a moral standard capable of admit- 
ting and granting equal justice to all. But so long as it 
is maintained as a substitute for, and in preference to, 
justice, just so long will it continue to lead away from 
justice, and of course the character of mankind will be 
influenced accordingly. This is the great mistake of our 
law -makers and has given rise to the passage and 
attempted enforcement of many cruel and obnoxious 
laws. We are to-day attempting to govern in a high state 
of civilization by laws founded upon precedent dating 
back one thousand years, based then upon feudal and 
barbarian customs and usages. If we continue to do 
this the character of our poor and laboring people will 
become of a low and lower standard, while the wealthy 
will become more and more arrogant and overbearing 
until, from natural causes, a change in our form of gov- 
ernment will become a necessity. We have been for over 
one hundred years building character upon this hypoth- 
esis of utility, applied, as it has been principally, to the 
practical side of life, while in theory we have been pro- 
claiming to the world through all channels of thought 
" equal rights and justice to all." ■ This practical side of 
life is the one on which we live, move, and have our 
being. It is not founded so much on theories as on theo- 
rems, and one cannot always make it fit either the theories 
of theology or the hair-splitting reasoning of the law, and 
must come down to hard, common sense at last. It is 
the traditional educator of mankind. This part of life, 
the greatest of all in moulding character, has come to be 
entirely influenced by the utilitarian principle. We have 
come to look at things entirely with utilitarian eyes from 
a utilitarian standpoint. It has, in fact, become a neces- 
sity to us; that is, we are forced to grapple with all 
forces in nature for no other than a utilitarian purpose. 
It would seem that this would not be so much the case 
with the richer people who, it might be reasonable to 
suppose, would, after accumulating a good fortune, be 
content to live in ease and comfort and spend some of 
their wealth cultivating their minds and hearts, even if 



46 IMPERIALISM. 

they were not disposed to engage in charitable work, 
which charitable work might be made to serve a great 
utilitarian purpose if there is anything in the principle at 
all (which we doubt). But not so; the wealthy are the 
last ones to leave off their utilitarian practices and, as a 
rule, never cease to utilize everything in sight till death 
ends the struggle. If a man buys a farm, house, horse, 
or cow, or even marries a wife, nowadays no other con- 
sideration is so much weighed in the contract as that of 
utility. But the poor and laboring man is the one who 
is bound down, hand and foot, in this utilitarian business, 
for he is the one who generally falls a victim to the hard- 
ships which it is sometimes supposed must be caused in 
individual cases in order to bring more good to the state. 



UTILITY VERSUS JUSTICE. 

Las Gasas urged the Spanish nation to substitute 
African slave labor on the West Indian islands, to pre- 
vent the extirpation of the native Indians, for the sake, 
not of justice, but utility, thus introducing African 
slavery into the New World and originating the African 
slave trade. 

At the organization of our government, Thomas Jef- 
ferson and others urged the emancipation of the slaves, 
but for the sake of utility it was not done and that blight 
on our history was allowed to remain. The fugitive 
slave law was urged and passed, imposing fine and pen- 
alty upon unoffending men for reasons of utility. The 
Missouri compromise was passed as a measure of utility 
and repealed by the doctrine of popular sovereignty, 
urged on the same ground of utility. As utility is not 
justice, we can assert without fear of contradiction, that 
no just law was ever passed for the purpose of utility. 
Bat it is in the lines of trade or commerce that this prin- 
ciple of utility works with the greatest force and violence, 
and it is against the interests of the poor or laboring 
man that it works with the greatest force. 



IMPERIALISM. 47 

Alexander overthrew the Phoenician power, destroyed 
their commerce, and founded the city of Alexandria to 
take the place of Tyre in the carrying trade and general 
commercial enterprises of the world. Then the Romans 
seized the commercial standard and carried it to the 
then known world, with a ruthless disregard for any 
principle but that of interest to the state, which 
characterized all Roman law and action. The Norse, or 
Sea Rovers, next came into ascendancy as a commercial, 
but more as a piratical, power, having carried the prin- 
ciple of utility to the extreme, until it assumed the pro- 
portions of open robbery and plunder, regardless of any 
law but that of force, and almost completely destroyed 
traffic on the ocean as a branch of commerce. 

Out of this confusion grew at least three commercial 
powers: The remains of the old Norse in the Dutch, a 
fusion of the old Roman piracy, and the Moorish, taking 
the name of the Spanish power, finally to separate again 
and to form the one an organized system of piracy for the 
Old, as the other did the same for the New World. Both 
of these were opposed by the power of Great Britain in a 
course of piracy scarcely less barbarous, but with the 
excuse of being necessary in order to put down the first 
two, which she finally did by the destruction of the famed 
Spanish Armada, and with the help of the United States, 
the suppression of the Barbary pirates. Great Britain 
now became the great commercial power of the world, 
and still holds that prestige, however much we may be 
loth to admit it, although the United States of America 
is destined soon to overreach and outstrip her either with 
or without a clash of interests. 

It will be seen by those who will take the pains to read 

and investigate this commercial history for themselves, 

that the whole contest was carried on with the most 

bloody and ruthless disregard for all justice and mercy, 

j and was, in fact, though probably necessary, as sanguine 

! a conflict as ever disgraced humanity and drenched the 

earth or sea with human gore, until its ferocity was 

i somewhat ameliorated by the advent of such men as Paul 



48 IMPERIALISM. 

Jones and Nelson, giving it at least a touch of humanity. 
Out of all this, however, grew all the commercial inter- 
ests and laws which now govern the civilized world on 
sea and land, and also out of it grew the great armaments 
of Europe and the world, the militarism which the czar 
of Russia desires to do away with, how and by what 
means history saith not yet. But his reasons, if we inter- 
pret them rightly, are great and humane, and should 
receive the approbation of all lovers of justice and 
humanity. 

If we now turn our eyes homeward and examine into 
the laws, usages and practice governing our own internal 
commerce and trade, we shall find them permeated and 
controlled altogether by those in use at the times above 
spoken of, although on all other lines we have, as a civil- 
izing and Christian nation and power, made great 
advancement. We have stricken the shackles from 
millions of slaves, only to leave them to take care of 
themselves and to contend with financial and commercial 
elements, against which their white brethren in the 
north are unable to cope succ3ssf ully, and if they fail we 
call it a question of race. All our great industries are 
rapidly assuming the centralized form which gives the 
power to wealth to dictate to the laboring poor, both in 
regard to wages and to the articles of consumption, 
which are necessary for his very existence, and on this 
miserly pittance doled out to him at stated periods the 
community expects him to maintain his family, clothe 
and house and feed them, educate them and bring them 
up to make good and useful' citizens; and if they fail to 
do this — but here we draw the line. Let those who can, 
reason out this problem. We might remark casually, 
however, that one reason given by men, why a man 
should be elected to office is that he has been successful 
in some line of business, and against a poor man, that as 
he has not been successful in business he can lay no 
claim to the office. Such immaculate wisdom in the face 
of the fact that General Grant died a poor man after 
being ranked among kings and twice president of the 



IMPERIALISM. 49 

United States. That Webster and even Jefferson died 
poor (but they were visionists) is beyond human compre- 
hension. These men simply did not train their great 
minds toward the sordid propensity of making money. 
Grant devoted too much time to his great military and 
executive theories. Webster exhausted his energies on 
oratory and statecraft, and Jefferson sat down and by a 
few strokes of his pen revolutionized the world, and the 
world will never cease to feel the effects to the end of 
all time in spite of all the gibes and kicks and self-con- 
ceited wisdom of imperialism. 

The imperialistic and utilitarian principle is nowhere 
so glaringly exhibited as in the controlling and operating 
of our great commercial enterprises, whether it be a rail- 
road corporation, a manufacturing establishment, or a 
trust. In these vast combines a regular scale or grada- 
tion is by the very nature of their structure necessar- 
ily arranged, from the men who furnish the capital which 
runs the whole business, down through all lines of labor 
to the foot of the ladder, making a system of caste and 
distinction as marked and certain as that which prevailed 
on the feudal estates of Europe in the middle ages, and 
with as little hope of promotion in its ranks. The sala- 
ries are fixed on an arbitrary scale, not of competition 
but of fitness or utility, which means for the benefit of 
the whole structure at the expense or hardship of the 
individual, which, be he poor or well-to-do, must wear 
out his life not only in a struggle for self support but for 
the benefit of the establishment for which he works, 
which has assumed the proportions, if not the preroga- 
tives of a state, but is not legally bound to furnish him, 
when he gets old and crippled, any relief to prevent him 
from becoming a public charge or the object of private 
charity. If anyone doubts the completeness of the 
tyrannical rules and regulations in force over the 
employes of one of these vast corporations let him read 
some of their dictatorial orders issued from headquarters 
and he will be able to see at once that they are as arbi- 
trary as any military despotism. This control over the 

4 



50 IMPERIALISM. 

habits, manners and customs of the employes is paid 
for with money, and as an investment is considered a part 
of the capital of the institution, and as such is a question 
for the company alone to settle and about which the 
employe has nothing to say. If this system of petty 
tyranny was confined to the limits of the institution it 
would not be so much to be deplored, but it is not by 
any means so confined. It follows the employe to his 
home, accompanies him in his daily life, marks him in all 
his associations, affects his standing and credit in his 
dealings, and finally enters his church, so that in body, 
mind and soul he is to a greater or less extent a slave, 
and all this is expected of him for the sake of utility. 

Our government from the nature of underlying princi- 
ples has been the last to enter the lists as an imperial 
power, but like Rome, being greatest in everything else, 
will, if once launched on this career, soon outstrip all 
competitors. It may be our destiny. It may be that 
God intends that we shall be the great conquering and 
civilizing power of the world. If so, what kind of char- 
acter shall predominate, what religion shall prevail, and 
what is to be the moving and all-pervading factor in that 
civilization; and will it be founded on the " Golden rule, " 
or the ' ' law of retaliation, ' ' or the c ' survival of the fittest ? ' ' 

On this last mentioned principle is based the " civil 
service law" now in force. There is no reason why a 
good official should not be re-elected to office, but to carry 
this admission to the extreme of a vested right, either in 
elections or appointments^ thus making it a life tenure, 
would establish a class of goverment employes educated 
in a certain line and subject to no control except the class 
legislation which originated the law under which they 
work. On the same principle, and with as much propri- 
ety, congress might pass a law creating a class of farm- 
ers, mechanics or laborers of any kind or description. 

This kind of legislation in its very essence is inimical 
to our form of government, abridging the rights of the 
individual, and opposed to free education and effort. 
There is no reason why we should not have special edu- 



IMPERIALISM. 51 

cation on any prescribed lines, but these should not be 
circumscribed by a law creating a life tenure in office, 
destroying all competition, as in trusts and combines. 
Considered in this light, it will be seen by all unprejudiced, 
fair-minded people that " civil service" is only one step 
on the road to imperialism, and that step created not by 
society, but by government exercised beyond its consti- 
tuted prerogative. 

The congress has no right to create any special class of 
citizens, and to endow them with any privileges not 
possessed by any other class of citizens without a viola- 
tion of the constitution of the United States. We can do 
better than this by a return to the old "law of retalia- 
tion," "to the victors belong the spoils," for that only 
lasted four years, and might be endured with the hope of 
the people and the whole people, that by the agitation of 
political parties, and by the interest thus created, exist- 
ing wrongs might be righted and progress made, and the 
truth arrived at without sinking into fixed conditions of 
caste covered with the dust and mould of centuries. It 
seems also to us that the congress has the power, under 
the constitution, as well to control large trusts and com- 
bines when they assume such form as to become a menace 
to the state, as they have to interfere in any other way 
with smaller bodies of insurrectionary forces which seem 
to get beyond the control of the police powers of the 
states, and when the public safety to life and property 
demand it. But it is a strange phenomena that in all the 
investigation of the l ' Wade court of inquiry ' ' into the 
| conduct of the war, by which the highways and byways 
have been searched in every state and territory of the 
Union, no evidence or implication, or shadow of suspicion, 
has been cast upon the great combine which furnished 
the beef supply to our army. This investigation has cost 
the people hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if its 
findings are true it is worth all it cost. But if not 
i founded on the principle of justice to all concerned, 
f which time alone can determine, it will yet be a subject 
of controversy for future investigation. But it looks to 



52 IMPERIALISM. 

us from afar off, that in the very nature of things it 
would have been much better if it had not been investi- 
gated at all, and savors too much of slanderous and 
vicious practices all around to give it any degree of dig- 
nity or of effect. 

This, then, seems to be the condition of our country at 
the present time. We seem to have lost sight of the 
grand fundamental truths upon which our government is 
based, and are drifting unconsciously in all lines of 
thought and action, away from republicanism or dem- 
ocratic principles toward the forms of monarchy. 
Especially is this so in all lines of industry applied to the 
practical side of life where interests clash. Classes and 
castes are rapidly forming and will continue to form as 
long as we continue to pursue the present system of 
utility as opposed to justice and humanity and equality 
before the law. Our remedy lies not in revolution, nor 
yet in any outside forces, or in force at all. It lies not 
in combat or the clashing of forces or interests. 

Too long has the world been subject to the conquest 
of power over power, of force over force. It lies rather 
in the line of a cessation of hostilities of the world's 
moving forces. This disarmament policy of the czar of 
Russia, if it could be applied to the world as a policy of 
peace and good will, would be a good first step in the 
direction of universal peace, but we cannot have this 
without also a cessation in all other forces which clash 
in human nature; as well as in militarism and imperial- 
ism. 

So long as human nature is inclined to oppress human- 
ity, from whatever source its power of oppression is 
derived, so long as one portion of humanity is arrayed 
against another portion for the purpose of gain and power 
on one hand, and for the mere struggle for existence on 
the other, we cannot have this universal peace. Power 
and force must cease to be an element in government, or 
at least become a minimum, and the maximum element 
must be looked for in the virtuous, law-abiding conduct 
of every man and woman, from the millionaire down to 



IMPERIALISM. 53 

the poorest toiler of the land, and until such a condition 
is reached there will be no peace on earth or good will to 
man. We must cease to be merely selfish and learn to 
be benefactors of the human race. These lines of action 
will be found to lie in our own form of government, the 
best ever yet adopted, from the just and equitable princi- 
ples of which we have drifted away, and by a return to 
which we will yet realize all and more than is outlined 
above, or that has ever entered the mind of any student 
of political economy. Think not that we have outlived 
either the principles of equality set forth in the Declara- 
tion of Independence or the law of love, which is the 
basic principle of our religion, for, if we have, then we 
have failed, and some other nation will take up our mis- 
sion after we have perished and carry out these princi- 
ples which are as eternal as the truth of God and as inde- 
structible as His universe. 

We have, however, as stated before, now arrived at a 
point in our progress, we believe, where it becomes our 
duty to choose, and upon that choice depends tremen- 
dous issues for this nation and for the world. On the 
one hand lies the path of duty, in the performance of 
which we may yet be able to realize, by a peaceable 
return to just principles, all that the poet dreamed " that 
Washington saw a thousand years;" all that Webster out- 
lined when he hoped for the future prosperity of our 
country, i ' that it might be durable as time and as abun- 
dant as the waves of the sea;" all that Lincoln meant in 
his Gettysburg oration, "that we dedicate ourselves anew 
to these principles, that government of the people, by 
(the people, and for the people, should not perish from 
the earth." 



THE MONEY QUESTION. 



( Closely allied to all the questions agitating the public 
^thought at the present time, is the subject of the part 
j which money acts in all the varied interaction of human 



54 IMPERIALISM. 

life. Money is variously and indefinitely defined by dif- 
ferent authors as being "a medium of exchange," "that 
which will pass from hand to hand unquestioned," "a 
representative of values," " a measure of values," etc., 
all of which implies some property of money, considered 
from a natural or philosophical standpoint. In consider- 
ing this subject, therefore, we meet with the same dif- 
ficulties encountered in all other matters where some 
theory is sought to be established, sometimes without 
regard to the merits in the case, and tending to mystify 
instead of to enlighten the seeker after truth. 

Whatever has been said, or may hereafter be said, in 
regard to money, something still remains upon which we 
may depend as true in regard to it. Money, as mone}^, 
can have no value except that which is given to it by a 
government fiat, and that value is only representative. 
Take away from money the representative value given 
to it by an act of government, and it at once ceases to be 
money. It may still have some value in the market as 
an article of commerce, but its value as money for the 
use intended by the government which made it, depends 
on the success and stability of that government and not 
on the stability or merits of the material out of which it 
was made. As soon as that government is destroyed its 
money, as such, is destroyed, it matters not whether it is 
made of gold, silver, nickel or paper. 

The material, then, out of which a government makes 
money cuts a large figure as to its use outside of the pur- 
pose for which it was intended. It may be national or inter- 
national, or universal, according to conditions beyond gov- 
ernment control, and so we find that it makes no difference 
howsoever much this government may desire to keep its 
gold and silver coin at home, it cannot do so if the bal- 
ance of trade is against it, and therefore if our circulat- 
ing medium were all of gold we might be greatly incon- 
venienced at times for a lack of money in our home trade 
or business. Therefore, >it follows that gold, being so 
near an equilibrium in its relative value, is the most 
expensive and at the same time the most dangerous of 



IMPERIALISM. 55 

all the materials out of which money is made. Next in 
line follows silver as being the more expensive as com- 
pared to paper. Now, there are so many ways by which 
the contingency might arise wherein a government might 
lose all its circulating medium and have no mone}^ left to 
do business with, that it stands every patriotic citizen in 
hand to inquire into this subject of money and its possi- 
bilities, liabilities and fluctuations. 

No one will stop to ask the value of a United States 
bank note, treasury note, gold or silver certificate, or any 
other form of paper money authorized to be issued by the 
government. Its face tells its value. As long as this is so, 
and as it all depends upon the fiat of the government, 
and the stability of the government depends upon the 
loyalty and patriotism and industry, and morality and 
virtues of its citizens, what is the resaon that the paper 
money of this country is not as good, dollar for dol- 
lar, as gold or silver? It is, and we all know it, and 
for the very reason that the government, being sound 
and stable, and backed up by millions of good, intel- 
ligent citizens, has seen fit to stamp it as money and 
make it a legal tender for all debts, public and pri- 
vate, except customs dues and interest on the public 
debt. And here its circulation stops, cut short at the 
ports of entry by the same fiat which made it money 
in all other respects. Of course, this is said to have 
been done to "strengthen the public credit," and as a 
matter of justice due to the holders of public securities 
whose interest was stipulated to be paid in gold, and we 
do not call in question the honesty and integrity of the 
men who were the public servants of the people when 
these negotiations were made and enacted into law, but 
it looks as if they did, whether consciously or uncon- 
sciously, by these same enactments create a currency for 
the people upon which the people could depend which 
was not, like gold and silver, in any danger of being 1 
monopolized by foreigners and foreign markets, and for 
which the bondholders did not have an itching palm. 



56 IMPERIALISM. 

Be this as it may, when we take into consideration this 
tendency of gold and silver as a circulating medium to 
slip over the bounds for which intended and leave us at 
a time most needed, and that such a contingency might 
occur from causes entirely outside of human agency and 
therefore beyond human control or the control of gov- 
ernment, it is an argument in favor of paper as a money 
which would not be subject to these conditions. It there- 
fore seems to us to be a reasonable conclusion that for 
the American nation silver is a cheaper and more reliable 
money than gold, while paper is the cheapest and the 
best of all. As money, then, does not depend for its 
value on the material out of which it is made, but on the 
strength and stability of society and government, why 
should we be dependent upon the precious metals which 
cost us very nearly their money value, when we could 
have a better money, more convenient to handle, made 
of paper, the material of which would cost us very little 
and the designs of which could not be so easily usurped 
and counterfeited? Is it simply because it is a custom 
which barbarians have handed down to us from which we 
are unable,' without a struggle, to free ourselves? 

It is said that nine-tenths of all our internal commerce 
is being done on a credit system, which may or may not 
be so, as it all depends on the way in which you view it, 
and it matters not how or from what standpoint viewed 
you get the same result. Realty is secured by a deed of 
record, chattels by honest possession, and so on through 
the whole procession. Corporation bonds are secured by 
the property and business of the corporation, which gets 
its vested rights from the state or nation. Municipal 
bonds are secured by the property of the city, and, 
finally, government bonds are secured by the concen- 
trated capital of the nation, expected to be paid for in 
taxes, either directly or indirectly obtained from the toil 
and labor of the millions of people who are supporters of 
the government, be it an empire, kingdom, or, as in our 
own, a representative republic. Who ever heard of a 
man obtaining money to pay his taxes without working 



IMPERIALISM. 57 

for it himself or getting it honestly in trade from some 
one who did work for it, unless he steals it, which some 
do? Come right down to bed-rock, there is no credit 
used in business, except by the laboring man who gives 
his employer credit a day, or a week, or a month, accord- 
ing as it is stipulated in the contract that he shall be 
paid for his labor, and even this is secured to him by 
public statute in most of the states. Even the price of 
the goods which the retail merchant sells to his customers 
is indirectly secured to him by penalties and statutes, 
hedging in the customer and making him amenable for 
abusing his own credit (in which case the man who sells 
the goods should also share). 

It does appear on investigation that this credit busi- 
ness, so much talked about, is a misnomer — a farce — and 
that the whole business sums itself up in the fact that if 
there are millions of honest toilers to speculate upon, 
the nation will be safe and prosperous, but if they should 
all perforce or otherwise, become a race of tramps — God 
have mercy, then, on both the speculator and the toiler. 
But the difference is this: The toiler must remain as a 
part of the surroundings while the speculator can take 
his gold, so long as gold is the standard of money, and 
change his location. Read history, friends, and you 
will find that the laborer has been left as above described 
times without number, and in the history of our own 
loved country we have one example. General Grant 
understood this when at Appomattox he told the 
deluded and ruined confederate soldiers to take their 
horses and go home and till the land. It was magnani- 
mous in General Grant, and he was in no wise to blame 
for their desperate condition, but their gold, wrung from 
the sweat and blood of slaves, had been wasted in a 
vain attempt to destroy this union of states and found 
upon it an empire. The southern confederacy fell, and 
with it also fell its money, and its laborers were left 
apparently without hope in the world. But the advo- 
cates of a gold standard of money argue that nothing 
else will pay foreign governmental debts — which experi- 



58 IMPERIALISM. 

merit not having been tried, it does not seem tenable to 
argue that it will or will not until such trial is made and 
either succeeds or fails. 

One of the greatest arguments to prove that a paper 
currency issued by our government would pay foreign 
debts is the fact that at present we are not likely to 
incur any greater amount of foreign indebtedness, as the 
balance is in our favor, and we can at all times command 
sufficient foreign coin to settle all differences. Besides, 
if those people are so anxious to buy our bonds, both pub- 
lic and private, why should they cavil at our paper money 
when once established, and with the nation to back it up 
as it does the bonds and all other forms of exchange or 
money, whether it be gold or silver or paper? 

This, then, brings us to the consideration of another 
feature of money not always noted in the discussion of 
this subject — that is the vast amount of paper documents 
in use in the transaction of business, which though not 
recognized as money, yet in one way or another seem to 
perform all the offices of and answer the same purpose 
as actual money. And herein lies a fact generally over- 
looked — whether purposely or not no one knows— that 
while gold and silver are the only acknowledged stand- 
ards of money, they do not perform more than one-tenth 
of the functions which they are supposed to perform, but 
are only practically brought into use to supply a deficiency 
in the circulating medium of all countries and as an article 
of exchange in settling differences between different gov- 
ernments, and in doing this they cease for the time being 
to be money and are only reckoned as bullion. They 
then become international and are no longer our own 
mone}', and as patriotism is supposed to end with our own 
shores, this kind of money is apt to forfeit by its functions 
our love and admiration, usually bestowed upon all 
national emblems — a fascinating fairy which eludes our 
grasp. 

When a man sells a load of grain or hogs in the market 
and receives a check on the bank for his pay, that check, 
while it remains in his hands, is the same as money to 



IMPERIALISM. 59 

him until he turns it over to the banker, who then counts 
it as money until it is redeemed and destroyed or can- 
celed by the maker. So we might go on to show that 
every dollar's worth of property in the civilized world 
to-day is covered in toto by some kind of legalized paper, 
which represents so much money in some form or other, 
and for the purpose they serve, are in all respects as 
good or better than money. 

We can, if necessary now, simply for experiment, con- 
duct all the business of this country without the use of a 
single gold or silver dollar, except in making foreign 
exchanges, and as a matter of fact, very little gold is 
used in circulation, and but for the sake of small change, 
very little silver. In view of these facts, why should we 
have such a patriotic love, apparently, for gold and sil- 
ver coin, when our own paper money, backed up by our 
nationality, our industry, our patriotism, and our civiliza- 
tion, is so much cheaper and more convenient for us? 

On this point we quote from one author who says: 
4 ' The precious metals are an expensive form of money 
which there is a temptation to supersede by paper money. 
Paper money introduces a class of money so varied and 
extensive that it is impossible to mark the limits of its 
extent or enumerate the shapes that it may take. 
An attempt has been made to get riddance of all difficul- 
ties by saying that a promise to pay is only the repre- 
sentative of money; but if it serve the purpose of buying 
or paying debts, it really is money." (Alden's Cyclo- 
pedia.) But we know that this is the case without 
reference to any other authority than that of our daily 
transactions, and this being true why is that we stand 
by the arbitrary measure of gold and call it the only 
reliable money, when it only performs a small per cent of 
the work expected of money as a circulating medium, 
and in performing that part, it ceases to be money and is 
treated in all respects as bullion — an article of com- 
merce? That this is true cannot be denied, but why it is 
true is one of the unsolved mysteries of human life. If 
we seek for a solution for it among the tons of dust-cov- 



60 IMPERIALISM. 

ered volumes written about it by financiers and political 
economists who have been the willing tools of tyranny 
since the time of Croesus (who was put to death by the 
queen of the Scythians, by pouring molten gold down his 
throat, in derision of his thirst for that article) to the 
present time, when we have plenty of Croesuses but no 
power to bring them down, either to a feeling of human- 
ity or a sense of common justice. 

It must appear a wonder to any unprejudiced person of 
sane mind, that if all the property in the world is repre- 
sented by its market value in paper money, or its repre- 
sentative in some form or other of legalized paper, how 
it comes to be considered a monstrous visionary scheme 
for the people to claim that there is not money enough in 
circulation, and that we should claim the measure of 
relief which would be given us by the free coinage of sil- 
ver or its equivalent in silver certificates., It is very 
plain to the understanding that the more money the peo- 
ple have to traffic with ready at hand, the less will be the 
business and profits of the gold-holders and money-len- 
ders and dealers in money, as a capital or base upon 
which to make more money. This kind of capital and the 
business arising from it all depends upon the gold stand- 
ard, for without this advantage given to its holders, that 
is, its bullion value being so near its money value that 
there is no risk in hoarding it and making it a base upon 
which to speculate in every and a\l other kinds of money, 
no speculation would be possible. And if the govern- 
ment or its credit should fail, the gold merchant is safe 
and his business only increases at the expense of the 
government, the people, and all other parties or elements 
concerned. 

Here, again, we are brought face to face with another 
form of imperialism and one which no government nor 
people can control so long as they adopt gold as a stand- 
ard. The surest way and the only way to put down this 
mighty power, built up in our midst by our own duplicity 
on the mistaken theory of a gold standard of measure as 
concerns our money, is for us as a nation to return to the 



IMPERIALISM. 61 

original standard adopted by our fathers, the standard of 
the silver dollar adopted in 1792 as the measure or stand- 
ard of the money of the United States of America. That 
statute has never been repealed, but that it has been 
ignored and crippled and rendered abortive through the 
influence of the gold advocates is as true as any other 
part of our history, and this tampering with justice to 
satisfy greed, has cost the people of this country more 
money and suffering and hardship than all other causes 
combined. So far, then, we have got with this gold stand- 
ard which is not a standard — a measure which is not a 
measure, a money which is not money — we cannot find 
a place in the statutes where it was expressly created, 
either the one or the other; while the silver dollar stands 
to day the same as at the beginning, the fixed and author- 
ized standard of our money, gold is a deception, a cheat, 
and a usurper. 

In olden times, when this subject of money was entirely 
under the control of despotic sovereigns, and used by 
them as a means by which they could indirectly, and 
sometimes without the knowledge of their people, 
squeeze out of them money for their own aggrandize- 
ment, which they could not have obtained by any other 
insidious dodge short of actual robbery, the present sys- 
tem of the gold standard for a money base had its origin, 
and its manipulations became known as the "sport of 
kings." 

We quote on this point, from the International Ency- 
clopedia, as follows: "The laws pertaining to coinage, 
formerly made by kings or ministers, have been known 
in all ages to place in their hands a prodigious power for 
good or harm to their people. The laws which control 
the qualities or quantities of money, whether of coin or 
paper, have an influence on the public weal vast and 
sudden, beyond those enacted on any other subject." 
The same authority, in speaking of the coinage laws of 
England, says : ' ' But the legislation followed the inter- 
ests of the monied powers, to the injury of the commer- 
cial and industrial classes" (which means the laborers). 



62 IMPERIALISM. 

No man in modern times has been able to write any- 
thing on the money problem without making some refer- 
ence to the operations of the French nation in that line, 
and those people have had a great influence on legisla- 
tion in regard to money. But of all their operations 
those assigaats have given rise to more comment than 
any or all others. Those terrible assignats have been a 
subject for ridicule and obloquy in all the volumes that 
have been written since the French revolution, until the 
word has become a synonj^m for all that represents a 
complete failure in, or an over-issue of, paper currency, 
when the real truth of the matter is that they were not 
money at all, and never were intended as such, nor were 
they a representative of money. They were an abortive 
effort at best, being of the nature of a land warrant, with- 
out having the power to purchase any designated portion 
of said land. They were followed by the mandates — 
about which, by the way, we never hear anything, either 
in derision or otherwise — which had the power given 
them to buy land. These mandates were of the same 
nature as our own land warrants, issued to surviving 
soldiers of the Revolution and the war of 1812. Now, a 
land warrant would never benefit a man unless he made 
use of it, and that use must be the one for which it was 
intended. 

When Bonaparte got control of the French nation he 
knew very well what to do with both the assignats and 
mandates, as well as with all other elements which lay 
in his path, either as a means or a hindrance to the course 
he pursued toward an empire. The gold having left the 
country with the nobility who fled to escape the guillotine, 
he had none of that article upon which to build a new 
regime, and so he resorted to a system of plunder, which 
has no parallel in the annals of history, by which most of 
the courts and capitals, as well as the churches, of 
Europe were robbed of their gold and silver plate and 
ornaments. The precious metals thus obtained by the 
blood of Frenchmen shed on a hundred battle fields was 
used as a new base upon which to build an empire and a 



IMPERIALISM. 63 

new nobility, all at the expense of the deluded people 
who thereby lost not only their lives and wealth but also 
their liberties. The wonderful valor and patriotism dis- 
played by the people of France in all this mighty strug- 
gle loses none of its virtue by this description, but only 
brings us the sad realization that it was misconceived 
*and misdirected. 

As in France, as described above, it will be seen by 
investigation that every nation has paid dearly for its 
gold upon which to build a monetary system, and that 
after the same has been established, by either conquest, 
as under Napoleon, or by industry, as under the republic 
after the Franco-Prussian war, so does it require the 
combined energies of the nation which adopts gold as a 
standard, to maintain it and keep it after it is established. 
So much is this found to be the case, that we find it to be 
a fact that no nation has ever risen out of difficulties or 
recovered from disaster without recourse to a subsidiary 
currency, either of silver or paper, to enable it to resume 
prosperity and pay its^ debts by the increased activity 
which such a currency gives to its internal commerce and 
industry. Bimetallists claim that for this reason all 
countries should adopt a dual standard, and also allege 
that a general depreciation of prices, as well as a depres- 
sion of trade, will always result from a scarcity of gold 
and a consequent increase in its value as a commodity. 
This being true it follows that the speculators in gold 
can and certainly do control the markets of the world. 
Gold, then, as a standard of measure for money, hav- 
ing this tendency to fluctuate in its value, furnishes itself 
the greatest objection which can be raised against it. 
Whether this fluctuation in its market value is due to its 
being a rare metal insufficient in quantity to meet the 
demand, or whether due to its manipulation by govern- 
ments or individuals or its use in the arts, cuts no figure 
in the truth of the allegation that gold has failed to meet 
the expectations of financiers as a stable material out of 
which to make a measure for all other values, and stands 
to-day like every other article of commerce, and just as 



64 IMPERIALISM. 

much subject to fluctuation and change, and this property 
in gold, when used as such standard of measure, gives 
rise to all the fluctuations of prices in all the articles of 
commerce which take place abnormally or outside of the 
natural results of supply and demand. This has come to 
be so well known and understood by all financiers that it 
is no longer a disputed point but universally acknowl- 
edged (except perhaps by politicians). 

' ' When gold is plenty it is cheap and prices are higher, 
and when gold is scarce it is dear and prices are low," 
has become an established business maxim at which no 
one wonders and which no one denies, and every one goes 
about his business without stopping to inquire why it is 
so or what are the consequences of its being so. But 
the men who own and handle the gold understand how 
and why this is so, arid the knowledge has given rise to 
a species of gambling and speculation on all kinds of 
property, in bonds and marketable paper securities. 
These great business centers are known as houses of 
exchange, established in the larger cities, where millions 
of values change hands in the twinkling of an eye, at the 
beck or nod of the operator. This kind of speculation 
or gambling, whichever it may be called, for the one 
name is as appropriate as the other when carried to 
extremes, is a great disturbing element in the market 
and is apt to cause fictitious prices on all kinds of com- 
modities, especially those in which labor is directly con- 
cerned as a factor, and of course in the natural tendency 
of all productions to base its value on the cost of the 
labor by which it is placed on the market; this fictitious 
disturbance finally culminates in lowering the wages of 
the laborer or throwing him entirely out of employment. 
The only reason, apparently, why the men who engage 
in this atrocious business do not carry it to the extreme 
of ruin to all the interests of industry is that it is too 
good a thing to be destroyed and they wish rather to 
foster and preserve it for f utu re prospects to the oper- 
ator. Large fortunes are made and lost at these gam- 
bling hells with high-sounding titles, sometimes entirely 



IMPERIALISM. 65 

on fictitious capital and without a dollar in sight, simply 
on the great reputation of the gambler. All this is done 
outside of the natural law of supply and demand, and it 
is of no avail to deny that it has a ruinous effect upon 
the industries of the whole country. It will be found, 
also, to be true by any one unprejudiced, and upon honest 
investigation, that this sort of business could not exist 
without resting on gold as a standard of money value. 
Nothing is more potent to prove the truth of the forego- 
ing statements than the conclusions arrived at by the 
two monetary conferences, the first gotten up by con- 
gress August 15, 1876, and called the ' ' Monetary Com- 
mission of the United States Congress," the second the 
"International Monetary Conference," Paris, August, 
1878. The first was a commission appointed by congress 
to inquire into all the monetary affairs affecting and agi- 
tating the country at that time. The committee was, of 
course, composed of the best financiers in both the sen- 
ate and the house, with instructions to call upon and use 
the testimony of experts and to make use of all documen- 
tary evidence treating on the subject. " The conclusions 
of the majority of this committee are: ' That the recent 
production of silver relatively to gold has not been greater 
than formerly, that the (then) recent fall in the price of 
silver was not caused by any recent large production, 
but mainly by the concurrent demonetization of silver in 
Germany, the United States and the Scandinavian states, 
the closure of the mints of Europe to its coinage, and a 
prevailing idea that the holders of government securities 
would bring about its demonetization, that gold is more 
fitful in its production than* silver — that to annihilate the 
money function of the one must greatly increase the pur- 
chasing power of the other and greatly reduce prices; 
that silver (as money) cannot be discarded without entail- 
ing the most serious consequences, social, industrial, 
political and commercial; that the evil is enormously 
aggravated by selecting gold as the metal to be retained ', 
and silver as the metal to be rejected; and that to submit 
the vast and increasing exchanges of this country and 



66 IMPERIALISM. 

the world to be measured by a metal never to be depended 
on in its supply and now actually diminishing in its pro- 
duction, would make crises chronic and business paralysis 
perpetual. The commission recommend the restoration 
of the double standard and the unrestricted coinage of 
both metals.' The commission claims that if the govern- 
ments of Europe adopted a gold standard it is a reason 
why we should not." In view of what has happened 
since this committee made its report its conclusions may 
truthfully be said to have been prophetic. 

The conclusions of the monetary conference at Paris, 
composed as it was of representative men of Europe and 
America (except Germany) and among these the ablest 
financiers of the world, are even more remarkable as 
regards the use of both metals. While almost unanimous 
in the opinion that both metals are necessary to the 
business interests of the world as money, they vary 
widely as to the use that should be made of silver, whether 
as a standard or a subsidiary coin, and this variation in 
the attitudes of the different representatives of the dif- 
ferent governments speaks more eloquently of the motives 
of the advocates of the gold standard than all the vol- 
umes that have been written in its support. The position 
taken by each of these representative men shows very 
conclusively the monetary policy of the governments 
which they represent. France, at the head of the Latin 
union, holds a position where she can, by holding on to 
both money metals, manipulate silver in a way to squeeze 
not only her own people but also those of the other 
countries composing the union, besides being engaged at 
that time in a scheme for throwing the surplus silver of 
Germany onto the colonial possessions of Great Britain 
and Spain; therefore she maintains a position of indiffer- 
ence or of expectancy, waiting for the next move on the 
chessboard. Italy, realizing this, was of all /the other 
nations the most anxious to enter into an agreement with 
the American proposition for a double standard showing 
that, although perfectly willing to squeeze her own people 
for the benefit of her own aristocracy, she was not willing 



IMPERIALISM. 67 

to have them squeezed for the benefit of France. Austria - 
Hungary, perhaps for similar reasons, favored some 
measure looking toward a double standard. 

Mr. Mees, representing the Netherlands, said "That 
while England and Germany maintained the gold stand- 
ard, no other was possible for his country, but he could 
express his personal opinion that it would be most bene- 
ficial to mankind that many states should adopt a double 
standard. ' ' 

Leon Say, of France, said: " There are 2,500,000,000 
francs in the Bank of France, and to withdraw the legal 
tender power from such a mass of money and throw it on 
the market as merchandise is an inadmissible idea." 

Mr. H. H. Gibbs, ex-governor of the Bank of England, 
announced himself a partisan of the gold standard, but 
would not legislate to drive silver out of use. Prof. 
Francis Walker maintained that down to 1873 silver had 
been the principal money of the world and the sole money 
of many prosperous nations; that it had ceased to what- 
ever extent to be money, not as the result of natural 
causes but by the acts and decrees of governments. The 
only delegate who declared emphatically and unequivo- 
cally in favor of a gold standard was Mr. De Thoerner, 
representative of autocratic Russia, while the adherence 
of Switzerland to the same was like the yelping of a cur 
at the heels of a mastiff. And so the record goes on, and 
the longer pursued the more plainly is seen the animus 
of the whole gold plot to rob toiling humanity through a 
subsidiary currency. 

Feer Herzog, of Switzerland, favored a gold standard 
for advanced civilized nations, leaving silver for those 
whose civilization was backward or stationary, as much 
as to say that only civilized nations were capable of ben- 
efit from a gold standard; and upon this superstructure 
is built modern advanced civilization. Comment on this 
proposition is unnecessary, in view of the fact that Ben- 
jamin Franklin was among the first advocates of a paper 
currency in the colonies of America, and as early as 1730 



68 IMPERIALISM. 

published a pamphlet entitled ' ' The Nature and Neces- 
sity of a Paper Currency." 

After a somewhat thorough resume of the findings of 
this conference a few questions naturally suggest them- 
selves. Why were these men unanimous in the opinion 
that silver as a money should not be excluded from cir- 
culation? Simply because gold as a standard is totally 
inadequate to furnish a circulating medium, and if it 
were adequate would be inadmissible because it would 
not furnish a means of speculation as it does now, coupled 
with silver or paper as subsidiary currency. This ques- 
tion and its answer are both furnished by the conclusion 
of the conference. Again, it does appear after a careful 
study of this conference that the following questions and 
answers are patent in its report: First, what would be 
the result to the world if a gold standard were universally 
adopted? Answer — Great disaster; second, what if a dual 
standard were adopted with unlimited coinage of both 
metals? Answer — Great prosperity. 

This seems to us to be a rational conclusion derived 
from the report of the " International Monetary Confer- 
ence." This being settled, the question again confronts 
us why no agreement could be arrived at. To answer 
this would require a treatise on the financial condition 
and prospects of each of the nations represented at the 
conference, but it would be found at last to center in the 
one all-absorbing principle of speculation in which all are 
engaged, waging a monetary war, each trying to get rid 
of and throw upon the others a depreciated currency. 
At that time Germany was trying to dispose of her silver 
and France, her hereditary foe, in order to frustrate her 
efforts had caused a cessation in the coinage of that 
metal by the Latin union, and so the strife goes on, ever 
ending in disaster to the poorer people of all countries, 
and all depending on and caused by the gold standard. 
For these reasons, and also matsy others equally as good, 
we are in favor of the free coinage by the government 
of the United States of both gold and silver in practically 
unlimited quantities. In relation to our banking system 



IMPERIALISM. 69 

it would not affect it in any manner detrimental to its 
interests; being founded, as it is, upon the industries and 
wealth of the whole nation, free coinage would be a bless- 
ing to it rather than an injury. But to the poor and 
laboring people of America it would prove the greatest 
olessing of the Nineteenth Century, because it would 
serve in a manner to checkmate and counterbalance the 
tendency of gold to control, by its fluctuations, the mar- 
kets and prices of the productions of the industries of the 
world. For this reason, also, it would serve to break 
down trusts and combines which are only formed for the 
purpose of controlling and fixing prices. 



THE STANDARD AND RATIO. 

Our present banking system having been called into 
existence by the necessity of a paper currency and 
founded on government securities or bonds would be 
more seriously affected by legalizing the standard of gold 
than by a return to the standard of silver, because at the 
present time an individual wishing to engage in banking 
can buy his bonds with any and all kinds of money in 
circulation; but if gold is made the legal standard it will 
become necessary to buy those bonds with gold or its 
equivalent, so that it would revolutionize the entire 
structure, placing our banking system on a gold basis 
instead of paper as is now the case, for it will be found 
that at present the only gold compulsory clause is that 
requiring the reserves to be deposited in gold. 

A return to the silver standard would obviate all these 
difficulties as well as many others that will arise if the 
gold standard of measure is ever legalized in this country, 
and that will probably be the business of the next con- 
gress. We have got to face this question of a legal stand- 
ard of money, for strange as it is, yet it is nevertheless 
true, that we have been doing business since 1853, or at 
least since 1873, on an assumption either that gold was 
our standard or that a paper currency was our money, 



70 IMPERIALISM. 

measured perhaps, at times, by foreign gold coin. We 
have been at sea in this matter of a standard long enough 
and it is now proposed to obviate the difficulty by making 
gold our legal standard of measure. 

What the effects of such legislation will be upon the labor 
and industries of our country can better be imagined than 
described, for so manifold will be its far-reaching influ- 
ences that nothing will escape the ruin and disaster which, 
in our opinion, will be sure to follow. While it would 
raise the price of gold all over the world it would, in pro- 
portion, depreciate silver and all paper currency, thus 
lowering the prices of all commodities and in the end 
bring financial ruin to all the poorer classes of the people. 
It would result in legislating money out of the hands of 
the poor into the hands of the wealthy, a system of legal- 
ized robbery through class legislation. Besides, the 
influences which will be brought to bear to cause this 
change in our finances will not be wholly our own, but 
will be principally exerted from a foreign standpoint for 
the benefit of foreign gold owners. Why any man with 
a spark of patriotism in his breast could be brought to 
support such a measure is certainly one of the unsolved 
problems of the money question. If gold is made our 
legal standard of measure it will encircle the world in 
the effect it will have on commerce, and as a measure of 
oppression to the poor and of emolument to the wealthy 
may just as well be dictated from London, Berlin, or St. 
Petersburg as from the congress of the United States at 
Washington. But upon our own people it will, of course, 
have the most immediate results. All promissory notes, 
contracts or promises to pay will then be considered pay- 
able in gold or its equivalent — farm loan notes and mort- 
gage securities of all kinds included — no gold clause will 
then be necessary to force payment. The exchange sys- 
tems of Europe and the world will be brought to our 
homes, operating in our banks and, along with the com- 
bines and trusts, setting the price upon our toil, the 
products of our labor in all lines, and of course on the 
bread we eat and the clothing we wear — without our con- 



IMPERIALISM. 71 

sent, unless such consent is given to the legislation which 
establishes this condition of Imperialism. 

In this connection we cannot fail to notice the close 
affiliation that seems to us to exist between the results 
to labor either of free trade or a universal gold standard, 
as either of these would have a tendency to measure 
values, especially of the products of labor, by one uni- 
versal standard, varied, of course, by degrees of intelli- 
gence, natural resources and climatic conditions, and 
except for these latter-named variations would place the 
laboring man of the United States on an exact footing 
with those of India, Africa and Europe. Can we do this 
without degrading the condition of our toiling people to 
the extent that they will be driven from all lines of 
industry and become, in time, nomadic in their habits; 
cease to educate their offspring; and lose their citizen- 
ship by having no fixed place of abode? No country on 
the globe is so rich in resources from which labor can 
draw its reward as our own, and it has given forth tre- 
mendous returns, but this is no excuse for us to cripple 
the efforts of labor by such atrocious legislation as legal- 
izing the gold standard. 

Also, in connection with this subject, we cannot avoid 
the issues which are bound to arise in relation to our 
money if we retain possession of Cuba and the Philippine 
islands. Already, from actual contact in commerce, our 
money is fast taking the place of the native circulating 
medium of those people, and what has happened in all 
ages to all conquered provinces will inevitably happen 
to them. The money of Spain will retire with the 
Spaniard, and whenever those islands become United 
States territory we will have to furnish them with our 
circulating medium. Those people have always been 
used to silver money and will be best satisfied with its 
use, but unless our object is to be to plunder and oppress 
them we cannot satisfy these people or purchase their 
own silver which will be thrown out of circulation with- 
out resorting to either a silver standard or bimetallism. 
Otherwise it would be an increased burden for our home 



72 IMPERIALISM. 

government to hold such a mass of silver on a par with 
a gold standard, whether the same is legalized or not. 



THE PARITY. 



This brings us to a consideration of the parity or ratio 
which exists, and always will exist, between gold and sil- 
ver, either when considered as money or as bullion, and 
we find upon investigation that this ratio is continually 
changing in spite of legislative and all other attempts to 
bring it to a fixed unit. To prove this we might quote 
the history of every nation or combination of nations 
who have had anything to do with it. All have failed to 
fix a parity between the two metals which has remained 
stationary any great length of time. This being true 
leads us to the next question which naturally suggests 
itself: What are the causes which produce this continual 
variation? Among these causes, of course, the first in 
order, if not in force, is the relative production of the 
two metals; and this, though varying from time to time, 
seems to stand to-day about the same as it did a thousand 
years ago, and the production of both have about kept 
pace with the increase in wealth of the world, which is 
natural and inevitable and could not be otherwise so long 
as we use those two metals as a means for all other 
values. 

Again, we reason that if the true cause of this variation 
was in the inequality in production it would be regular 
in its effects and either increase continually until one or 
the other of the metals would reach a minimum value or 
become worthless, or else it would gradually decrease 
until the metals would find an equilibrium. But it has 
not taken this natural course, and neither of these con- 
ditions have been developed, but on the contrary the 
variation has gone up and down, above and below a cer- 
tain point, which point has never been fixed and must 
lay as a medium between the two extremes of the varia- 
tion. Now, it seems to us that we fail to find in natural 



IMPERIALISM. 73 

relative production a true cause for this continual varia- 
tion in the ratio and must look somewhere else for such 
cause. 

We turn, then, to the next cause in order, which is the 
use of gold and silver in the arts. Now, it seems strange, 
but we are not using so much of the precious metals in 
the arts according to our own wealth as was used by 
the ancients. Our modern civilization has no affinity for 
the massive gold and silver ornaments both to person 
and property in use long ago. The gold and silver uten- 
sils of all kinds, as well as the gold and silver gods of 
the ancients, have been melted into coin for our use in 
purchasing other beautiful and useful articles of com- 
merce which inventive genius has provided for us and 
which suit us much better. There seems to be no 
demand either for gold or silver in the arts sufficient to 
cause a fluctuation in the ratio between the two metals, 
and no reason to believe that at the present time the use 
of gold and silver in the arts cuts any figure at all. So 
we must look again for a cause, and that cause, we believe, 
is found in legislation and manipulation, and these forces 
are exerted for the purpose of speculation. , 

As soon as any nation or government establishes a ratio 
between gold and silver it will be found to be the business 
of other governments, as well as of individuals, to go to 
work at once to attempt to destroy that ratio, and this 
is done sooner or later either by counter-legislation of 
other governments or by investments of individuals, or 
of both together, and always for speculation. We have 
been running for twenty-five years on an assumed stand- 
ard of gold, with an actual standard of silver held at par 
with gold, at a ratio of one to fifteen and nine hundred 
and eighty-eight one-thousandths, or very nearly sixteen 
to one. We have done this and been prosperous in spite 
of all the machinations of gold speculators and the coun- 
ter-legislation of designing governments. Practically, 
we have had at times free coinage of silver. If we can 
do this on an assumption we can do better stil] on a 
reality by a return to the standard of silver at the same 



74 IMPERIALISM. 



. 



ratio we are now using. But if we change all this by 
legalizing the gold standard we are liable to bring disas- 
ter to our own people and increased oppression to the 
laboring people of the world. 

The fact that the United States has been able for a 
quarter of a century to hold all her silver and paper 
money in circulation at a par with gold proves that bimet- 
allism can be maintained by legislation on a silver stand- 
ard at a fixed ratio between the two metals. It also 
proves that the ratio in force during this period has only 
been caused to vary by legislation and manipulation, and 
but for these would have remained nearly the same 
throughout. The silver and paper in circulation now, so 
long as it is held at par with gold, serves the same pur- 
pose as bimetallism — tending to set free that much gold 
and thereby making it more plentiful and cheap in the 
market. But if we change all this by legalizing the gold 
standard then nothing will represent gold in the market 
but gold or its equivalent in silver or paper, and it will 
be found that the ratio, whether fixed or not, will vary 
according to the quantity of the gold supply, whether 
that is furnished by the mines or the speculators. This 
will be placing in the hands of the wealthy who can com- 
mand gold the same power once exercised by despotic 
sovereigns. 



OUR CHOICE. 



We leave off this subject with the greatest regret that 
we can not be any more explicit or make it more plain to 
the understanding of our readers. 

Two things are necessary for the maintenance of our 
liberties — the intelligence of our voters and the wealth 
of our people. We cannot curtail the one or restrict the 
other (unless it is done for the public good) without great 
danger to all. Whenever we reach that stage in our 
social development when the poorer people will be unable 
to maintain the standard of intelligence necessary to con- 
stitute them self-acting, self-governing voters, and the 



IMPERIALISM. 75 

richer people consider it a burden to hold them up to that 
standard, then but one alternative remains and that is to 
disfranchise the masses. We will then cease to be a pop- 
ular government, and we will soon reach that point unless 
something is done to counteract the movement. We can- 
not, at this time, avoid the consideration of this subject 
or shirk our responsibilities. You cannot kill a cause 
any quicker or by any more effectual means than by 
simply ignoring it. 

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." It is the 
duty of every man and woman to guard and guide the 
public thought for the public weal, and to see to it that 
we do not sail blindly into those channels and upon those 
shoals which have wrecked so many nations before us, 
and thereby lose our own liberties and furnish no safe- 
guard for those with whom we come in contact, while we 
leave to our posterity only the legacy of a name. We 
have been so short a time, and have displayed such 
wonderful energy, in developing the wonderful natural 
resources of this new continent of America, that our 
energies in accumulating material wealth have acquired 
an impetus in all lines never before attained by any nation 
or people. Two things have contributed in a large degree 
to our success — the great natural resources of our country 
and the intelligence, industry and virtue of our people, 
the high standard of our toiling millions, made so by free 
education and the exercise of that liberty bequeathed to 
us by our fathers. Our resources are not exhausted, our 
energies unabated and increasing. 

But we have arrived at a point, it seems to us, where 
it behooves us to pause and inquire in what direction we 
shall hereafter direct this great increasing energy — these 
vast, almost boundless, resources. It is not with us a 
question of power or of resources, but of expediency of 
policy of morality; not a question as to what we can do, 
so much as it is a question of what we should do, with 
the tremendous forces which, as a nation, we now possess. 
The United States can, and will, perhaps, absorb the 
West Indies. She can, and will, conquer and absorb the 



76 IMPERIALISM. 

Philippines, and it lies in the scope of her power to 
dominate the world, but for what purpose and to what 
end? The great militarisms of Europe have apparently 
reached their climax. Their rivers are studded with 
fortifications which bristle with armaments in the hands 
of skilled soldiers. Their lakes and rivers and ocean 
coasts are darkly specked over with frowning warships. 
All this is upheld by money obtained from their people 
by despotic power, for the purpose of holding in check 
the aspirations of those people for that liberty and 
equality before the law which we enjoy. Shall we 
imitate those militarisms and line ourselves up alongside 
of them as the oppressors of mankind, simply because we 
can and will, if we do so, outstrip them all in the control- 
ing power of our imperialism, although in doing so we 
lose our liberties and find ourselves with an exhausted 
country and an oppressed people? Or shall we continue 
to work on along those lines of truth, justice and right- 
eousness, by which we have attained whatever of strength, 
of ability, or of grandeur that is now accredited to us by 
other nations and other peoples? 

All powers or forces when exerted for evil purposes 
carry with them the elements of self-destruction. We 
see in the combines and trusts which have destroyed 
competition, only its climax reached after centuries of 
commercial strife by man, to over-reach and outstrip and 
thereby rob his f ellowmen. And although this has been 
done under legal forms, with at least the color of law, 
its evil tendencies have at last obtained control, utility 
has usurped the forms of justice, and suicide is the result. 

We see, also, in the great armies and navies in the 
world, held up and supported as they are, by the sweat 
and toil and suffering of the millions of oppressed people 
whom they overawe and dominate, the climax of the 
principle that "might makes right," the culmination of 
that militarism which has ever been exerted to oppress 
humanity. In their present form and attitude these 
mighty forces have apparently exhausted all the resources 
of the countries which maintain them and are now com- 



IMPERIALISM. 77 

ing so near the danger line that in the opinion of the 
greatest absolutist in the world they should be disarmed 
and abandoned. 

Self-destruction inevitably awaits these great forces, 
either by a clash in wars which will and can only end in 
the destruction of two-thirds of the population of the 
world or else th3y will peaceably be dissolved for lack of 
self-support, and in either case will only prove the truth 
of the assertion that " The paths of glory lead but to the 
grave." The powers of evil and of darkness in the world 
to-day are concentrating their forces apparently for a 
final contest. All are taking this imperial concentrat- 
ing, dominating form until it would seem nothing can 
be done outside these forces, to save the world from 
one headlong plunge into oblivion. But God, in His 
infinite wisdom, has so arranged it that these contending 
forces have, all of them, within themselves the elements 
of self-destruction. 

When the fence encloses the world it is a waste of 
labor to put up the bars or shut the gate. Rome 
absorbed the world, but could not digest or assimilate it, 
and the world in turn destroyed Rome. We have only 
to open our eyes from sleep these days to realize the 
picture drawn by Goldsmith in "The Deserted Village." 
The question now confronts every American citizen, 
whether they realize it or not— shall we join our forces, 
intellectual, physical and material, to this great crusade 
of the powers of evil against truth and justice and 
humanity, or shall we continue as heretofore, to work 
in harmony with those great principles which have given 
us all our prestige and all we have of liberty that is 
worth preserving, both civil and religious? This ques- 
tion cannot be evaded or lain lightly aside. It confronts 
us in every avenue of life. There is a power in the 
world to-day which is reaching out after, and testing, the 
hearts of men and demanding a solution to this question. 
The commercial world is shaken to its very foundation 
by this all-absorbing, all-pervading problem. Every 

business man, every banker or broker, every tradesman, 
■ u ofQ, 



78 IMPERIALISM. 

mechanic or laborer, is debating in his mind to-day the 
appeal to his heart and judgment that this question is 
making. All the professions are coming face to face 
with it, and the educators are appalled at the magnitude 
of the vicissitudes and possibilities which it brings to 
their view. The clergymen carry it into the pulpit and 
the lawyers bring it daily before the bar of public jus- 
tice where it demands a solution, and judges and justices 
are wrestling with its essence and its ethics. 

Answer this question, ye American people, but answer 
it as you would answer for your souls before the bar of 
God. Let it be to your credit that it be answered in 
favor of the down-trodden and oppressed of every land 
and clime. In favor of truth and justice and humanity, 
which our religion has taught us, our ethics have so far 
preserved for us, and which our fathers in the beginning 
bequeathed to us. 

THE END. 



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